There is a crossfit gym that I pass by every morning on the way to work. It is full, and never stopped during this pandemic. Even at 7AM, it is full of patrons.
I would call the "proper authorities", but since there is a State Police car parked outside every morning, and he is in there working out, just like before the pandemic, I doubt calling anyone would do anything.
Adding to the post, I read it earlier... it is really strange that people feel they have to go work out in groups. Or get together, or go to bars. I find it amazing we can not see short term sacrifice for long term gain.
> I find it amazing we can not see short term sacrifice for long term gain.
Maybe because nobody successfully proved to these people (me included) that this sacrifice is useful.
You can't tell to people, you have no risk of dying (0.5% death rate for population, much much lower for healthy and young people), people who are at risk of dying can protect themselves even around sick people (wearing a mask, staying at home, washing hands, ...) so this is not your fault if they catch it but you need to stop living your life. That can't work.
And above all, what is the long term strategy, we stop everything for the rest of our lives ? (a vaccine doesn't always work, example the flu vaccine, which works approximately).
It is not that people don't want to sacrifice, it is just that scarifying is the worst solution for everyone
> Maybe because nobody successfully proved to these people (me included) that this sacrifice is useful.
> people who are at risk of dying can protect themselves even around sick people (wearing a mask, staying at home, washing hands, ...)
This makes it clear "nobody successfully proved" really means "I didn't bother to listen". The messaging on masks has long been "they reduce transmission by infected people", not "they prevent you from getting it".
In EVERY other country you can buy masks, and they were strongly encouraged, that prevented YOU from getting sick.
South Koreas KF94 masks come to mind, very good coverage and fit (3 parts including one under chin). And despite the lies basically posted by you and plenty of others including health authorities (don't wear masks if you are "healthy", masks can't protect you from covid) masks CAN be used to protect you from infection, and that is a MUCH more powerful motivator for folks to wear them, and can also be targeted to those who are at higher risk.
We need to get a grip of basic facts. Masks help reduce transmission and if reasonably designed (look overseas) infection. Why else do doctors in hospitals wear N95 masks? To avoid getting sick.
I am somewhat higher risk. I wear and N95 under a surgical mask. This reduces my risk of getting covid.
The other issue you miss is that there really has not been good evidence of outdoor transmission, and the claims of covid living on outdoor surfaces for 7 days also are suspect.
So when folks say - no one go to the beach, it's a bit of an eye roll. If covid were THAT infectious (huge open ocean airflow hitting the beach, blasting sun) then we'd all have it already just from going to the grocery store.
I think health professionals lost a megaton of credibility in claiming masks don't help, to not wear masks, or that masks can only help reduce transmission not infection. Other countries went all out on masks - with great results.
They are reaping the rewards of these basic lies. Now I'm told going to beach on a sunny breezy day is high risk. I'm listening, show me the outbreak, show me the data that says this is high risk.
N95s are still quite difficult to find here in the US.
Cloth and non-medical disposable masks are not considered protective (although it's likely they block some inbound particles, and there's evidence they may thus result in a gentler illness on average) but do reduce transmission.
You're right that there are multiple kinds of masks; in the US, it's kinda pointless to talk about N95s. No one's wearing them, in part because they're hard to get, and in part because our anti-maskers threw enough of a fit about fairly comfortable ones.
> The other issue you miss is that there really has not been good evidence of outdoor transmission, and the claims of covid living on outdoor surfaces for 7 days also are suspect.
You'll actually find me elsewhere on this thread noting that outdoors tends to be safe, so I'm not sure what statement of mine you're arguing with here.
> N95s are still quite difficult to find here in the US.
Yes, our government has been incompetent all around. That's a bad thing.
If the country can't gear up production of masks to fight a pandemic, why am I supposed to believe we could do anything of meaning competently? I know I'm a lot less impressed with our military's readiness if we ever get into a real war than I was a year ago. We've shown we're very good at throwing money at fraudsters and very little about actually producing things we need ourselves.
We also seem to care very little about over a million deaths, if we go with something like a 0.5% fatality rate. Puts the reaction to 9/11 and the whole "how dare you disrespect our troops" racist reaction to athletes protesting into perspective...
I don't understand the people who go from "wow, we've handled this badly" to "we might as well never try anything again," though.
That should be the motivation to start paying more attention, from local politics all the way up, not give up.
> Yes, our government has been incompetent all around.
I don't agree. This is not incompetence. It is malice. The government absolutely could be responding far better, and doing much of the same things every other western democracy is doing. A popular political position in this country is to prove that we need less gov't by making sure it appears incompetent. Combined with the similar political need to believe the virus is a hoax means we get zero federal response.
I wouldn't argue with that much when looking at federal government (judicial branch excluded), but state and local governments have been varied in their responses, and most have been far from malice. In Chicago, my local alderman has been reactive to events (including non-covid matters, like storm damage) and informative about public services (especially with testing sites). Helpful and without cynicism.
I believe that national politics gets an undue spotlight, and that local government (in particular) does not receive the attention warranted.
The federal government doesn't seem to feel that same restraint when it comes to sending federal police into Portland to do community-level police work. And they are certainly more than happy to dictate many other aspects of our lives using whatever levers they have available. So why is it suddenly now that they can't provide any help in a pandemic because it's the States' responsibility?
>>The federal government doesn't seem to feel that same restraint when it comes to sending federal police into Portland to do community-level police work
While I disagree with the strategy and execution it is completely dishonest to say they were sent "to do community-level police work", they were sent to protect Federal Property after the City and State Governments failed to provide any protection for said property in the face of riots.
Again if it were me I would have just abandoned the building, and take with it all federal money letting Portland burn setting up a new Federal Courthouse (and giving the money that comes with it) to a new city in the region that would welcome the economic output of such a venue.
>>And they are certainly more than happy to dictate many other aspects of our lives using whatever levers they have available.
2 wrongs do not make a right... As a libertarian I advocate for the reduction in Federal power all the time at every level. It seems however Democrats only complain about federal power when a Republican is in charge, and Republicans only complain about Federal Power when a Democrat is in charge. Democrats and Republicans alike have transferred HUGE amounts of power from the Legislative to the Executive which enabled both Obama and now Trump to use that federal power in ways many people disagree with
They may wish that the local police were more successful at suppressing the violence, but that doesn't make it their responsibility to deal with the rioters. And why did they feel the need to meet the Portland protesters with violence but not the guys who occupied federal property out in Eastern Oregon? Politics, perhaps?
> 2 wrongs do not make a right
Sure. However, promoting the general welfare of people in the US by supporting pandemic response is a good bit less bad than creating arbitrary new regulations and laws that criminalize behavior which is really a local concern.
> We also seem to care very little about over a million deaths, if we go with something like a 0.5% fatality rate. Puts the reaction to 9/11 and the whole "how dare you disrespect our troops" racist reaction to athletes protesting into perspective...
That is something to ponder. What does this say about us as a people? "Hey, we must retaliate, they attacked us!!" vs "Hell no I will not do one simple thing to protect others when we are all under attack from a virus." Hrm.
A few bad apples spoil the bunch. A society made up of people that tolerate 20% of their own to be antisocial super spreaders is rotten to the core, even if the majority behaves responsibly.
There's an analogy to US police forces there, too. And to US politicians.
I find it kind of odd that there appears to be a huge overlap between the following two groups of people:
People that say government can or should impose/strongly-suggest/mandate mask wearing to protect overall population. Essentially the pro-mask wearing individuals.
Individuals that believe that we need end-to-end encryption, and that we can't have government watching our emails, tracking our movements, doing facial recognition, profiling, etc to stop violence.
In both cases, one could argue, the solutions being pushed-back against can effectively stop their respective problems. E.g. large scale big-brother surveillance of all individuals could effectively reduce crime to near zero. Just as 100% large scale government lockdowns/SIP and mask-orders can stop the spread of an epidemic.
Obviously I'm generalizing to try draw a comparison and point out the hypocrisy. Both of the problems require a suspension of some set of rights for "the greater good", yet we somehow balk at one (surveillance, facial recognition, centralized DBs, etc) whilst applauding and being offended when people question the other (mask wearing, SIP laws, social distancing, etc).
It's probably time that we decide as a society what we want instead of incessantly debating back and forth with contradictory requirements and expectations we impose on our governments.
Governments spying on their people has been happening for decades and there is little evidence of any significant benefit for society, while the potential for abuse is obviously huge.
By comparison wearing masks to slow down infection rates of viruses/diseases that spread via nose/mouth secretions has centuries of evidence backing it up and the government doesn't really gain anything by enforcing the use of masks in places like supermarkets. Maybe it can artificially increase demand to benefit some mask manufacturers but that's it.
I'll agree it's not a perfect analogy. But if you want to press me on a potential abuse of a government-mandated and punishable order of wearing masks: Abuse of power by corrupt government officials that can use this extra and easily-fakeable "offense" in order to punish individuals that they don't like. Or what about the negative social aspect of creating laws that have neighbors secretly reporting each-other for this? Or the potential for child-traffickers to gag + hide the gag with a mask while they're busy engaging in trafficking?
If you sit long enough you can come up with a potential abuse for any government law or idea. Just as is done with mass-surveillance. What we don't do is sit down and come up with extraordinary ways and means for us to use powerful tools/ideas/solutions such as surveillance in a responsible and safeguarded manner that is not exploitable by bad individuals in government, or bad governments themselves.
N95s are still quite difficult to find here in the US.
Yes. That's pathetic at this late date. Worse, many of the off-brand ones don't do much. Some tests found masks performing around the 20% level, instead of the 95% level. This problem should have been fixed months ago. Part of the problem is that manufacturers didn't want to invest in the equipment, because the epidemic was supposed to be over by now.
Good N95 masks use a clever technology.
The inner layer is a stretched film with holes. That layer can stop particles smaller than the holes - it's an electret, with a permanent static charge. Anything solid small enough to get through the holes gets pulled to the edge of a hole electrostatically and sticks. This has the interesting property that it works better on smaller particles; the static charge pulls them in more easily. So these can filter solids far below the hole size. Masks lacking that technology either don't work or obstruct breathing too much.
3M 8210 masks work that way. You can get them expensively on eBay, and cheaply if you're willing to wait 60 days for delivery. The "8210 Plus" model has a better elastic strap, which mostly matters for long-term use or storage. Aging of the elastic band is the weak point in the base 8210 model.
There's a vast supply of cheap "surgical" masks available. At least get a supply of those. Only ones with a bendable nose clip. Anything that leaks around the nose is worthless.
Machines for making N95 masks are available for sale, although some of them look like prototypes and are far too slow.
For some reason it is absolutely CRITICAL for me to not go outside to a beach, but it isn't critical for the folks lecturing me to get their act together and make masks that cost basically 10 cents to $1.50 and would allow myself and others to carry on productive and healthy activities?
This is the issue - YOU are not listening. People see through the pantomime. Google and apple have API's to help with exposure notification - no apps developed at national level and few at state level. Other countries went big on apps.
Sure, they may not work great, but there just is a total lack of effort to actually solve the problem.
Same thing with masks. Countries with fractions of our per capita GDP and income levels crank up huge mask production. Total availability - literally the post office handing them out. No, not N95's always, but KF94s and other very effective masks. We are still talking about mask availability?
Same thing with testing. I'm talking walk up no dr referral needed testing. My health care provider WILL NOT test unless you are basically dying. I had a collegue, a once in a lifetime chance to see family (10 years) came up. I told him, find a private pay / doesn't do insurance / doesn't deal with govt testing facility and get tested before traveling so you don't spread it by accident.
What about contact tracing. You have millions of folks unemployed, are paying out 1+ trillion in checks etc to all sorts of people, and you can't get a contact tracing program going. Your telling me none of these people can go down a call list and call folks up?
All I hear from health professionals is how they can't do anything about anything, nothing helps, except staying alone at home. Masks don't help if you don't wear them perfectly, masks can't be found, the apps won't really work so they aren't going to do that. PLEASE get a grip.
Masks will help - so get production going. Contact tracing - hire folks sitting around. Get the apps going, get testing up, get rears in gear. I think if we saw more credible action by the "proper authorities" lecturing us we'd all be more enthusiastic in doing our part (now we can't even get good masks or apps etc).
> For some reason it is absolutely CRITICAL for me to not go outside to a beach...
No. Beaches are quite safe.
> but it isn't critical for the folks lecturing me to get their act together and make masks that cost basically 10 cents to $1.50 and would allow myself and others to carry on productive and healthy activities?
It is! (It's not happening in the US, though.)
> This is the issue - YOU are not listening. People see through the pantomime. Google and apple have API's to help with exposure notification - no apps developed at national level and few at state level. Other countries went big on apps.
You seem to be ranting as if I'm supporting the current state of things. The current state of things is bad; the Feds are largely AWOL. States are muddling through with various levels of competency, mostly poorly.
Everything you're saying I agree with. The reaction to the pandemic has been absolute shit, and it leaves us in this position now - ongoing lockdowns, supply shortages, and the like. One need only look at Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Taiwan, South Korea, etc. to know it didn't have to be this way.
>> N95s are still quite difficult to find here in the US.
No they are not. This misconception is absurd. I bought 200ct of KN95 in early April from AliExpress and got them in 10 days. They are still plentiful.
> I bought 200ct of KN95 in early April from AliExpress
How certain are you they are authentic? Remember a couple years back when everyone bought glasses online for watching the solar eclipse and then it turned out they were all fake and wouldn't protect your eyes?
Especially given the economic incentive present today for anyone willing to sell "N95" masks.
N95's are available on eBay as a black market ish item. Sellers come and go. I've bought dozens and given them to friends and family and use them when in an Uber.
KN95s are fragile, have crappy fit (leak air enormously, obvious if you wear glasses since they fog), and aren't very well regulated. But they are better than surgical or those ridiculous cloth masks.
N95s would have had to be produced non-stop for a decade prior to a pandemic to satisfy demand. We are 10 years behind schedule because our government only prepares for wars with $300M tanks instead of $100M stockpiles spread around the country.
> Cloth and non-medical disposable masks are not considered protective
> anti-maskers threw enough of a fit about fairly comfortable ones
How's this for a solution? Make masks with inhalation valves. You can find masks for dusty work with exhalation valves. It wouldn't be too big a change to reverse those valves. The lost protection against inbound particles isn't much, and the gain would be near elimination of the inherent discomfort of re-breathing CO2. I'm not an anti-masker, but I notice I'm a lot more comfortable with my mask off.
The mask still protects other people from transmission by you.
Anti-maskers wearing lace 'masks' does not protect other people.
They are completely different, and that is the main point of mask wearing for the general public - to protect each other by reducing the chance of ourselves transmitting it if we have it.
Your comment assumes the entire purpose of a (nearly) sealed mask is to protect the wearer from incoming droplets or particles. I don't understand where this ignorance comes from; it's been widely known and repeated for some time that masks do much more to protect others from infection from the wearer. There's only a small amount of protection for the wearer from infection from others.
An inhalation valve preserves the mask's primary purpose by closing off during exhalation. It gives up a small amount of protection for the wearer, but obviously a lot of people aren't interested in that anyway and refuse to wear masks. With an inhalation valve they could at least protect others.
> Your comment assumes the entire purpose of a (nearly) sealed mask is to protect the wearer from incoming droplets or particles
It doesn’t just assume it. It’s the whole point of the masks.
If your aim is just to prevent making people sick, a surgical mask is just fine (exhibit A, normal doctors).
If your aim is to prevent getting sick yourself, a N95 respirator is a better choice (exhibit B, doctors treating COVID patients).
An inhalation valve does less to protect other people, because the expelled air still has to go somewhere, and will just blow out of the sides of the mask. It could theoretically go through the mask material if it was thin enough, but there’s probably too much pressure inside and it’ll burst out the sides.
That in reverse is the whole idea for masks with an exhalation valve. Breathing in creates negative pressure inside the mask, so air gets pulled inside through the mask. When breathing out the valve opens and releases the extra pressure without blowing out the sides (not really a problem per-se, but would compromise your protection).
> An inhalation valve does less to protect other people, because the expelled air still has to go somewhere, and will just blow out of the sides of the mask. It could theoretically go through the mask material if it was thin enough, but there’s probably too much pressure inside and it’ll burst out the sides
No, an inhalation valve makes 0.0% difference here. Here's a simple mental exercise to understand better. Imagine two people side by side. They are wearing identical masks, except one has an inhalation valve. They breathe in, pause, breathe out. In your mind, freeze the frame at the pause between breathing in and breathing out. At that moment, what's the difference between the two? Nothing. Now watch them breathe out. What's the difference? Still nothing.
Where is this coming from that only a small amount of protection is provided to wearer. For a while I kept on posting studies showing the effectiveness of masks in protection infection by wearer, but it's hopeless - somehow public health authorities have gotten everything so muddled in folks minds.
> Where is this coming from that only a small amount of protection is provided to wearer [...] public health authorities
I clicked the HN link to your comments. I couldn't quickly find studies, just a mention of Korea having success with KN94 masks. I think it's safe to repost them now without being repetitive.
The "95" in N95 refers to it filtering 95% of all particles in general, and particles with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers specifically.
The relationship between particle size and the ease of filtering them is U-shaped, not linear, with the dip at around 2.5 micrometers being the bottom of the trough.
> I think health professionals lost a megaton of credibility in claiming masks don't help, to not wear masks, or that masks can only help reduce transmission not infection. Other countries went all out on masks - with great results.
I think for the most part health professionals answered specific questions about specific types of situations or types of transmission, and the media runs with overly broad statements when are then pushed/rejected by different parties.
There are many inputs that go into something as simple as a recommendation of "should the general public wear masks", including "are there enough masks for health professionals currently", "what's the current infection rates", "how far has it spread", "what type of masks". Additionally the answer might be different at different times in the past depending on whether talking about a locality with an outbreak or the whole nation. Expecting the answer as to whether wearing a mask to help to not change over time is as silly as expecting it to not change pre-COVID-19 start and after it.
The bottom line is that the inputs that influence the recommendation are fluid and change over time, so we should expect the recommendation to change over time, and the only reason people aren't getting that is because it's in the best interest of different groups to position it otherwise so they can use it to score points (and while the obvious groups in question are political, they aren't limited to one side of the spectrum, this is a common tactic used across the board which is particularly troublesome when it attacks the credibility of the people we trust to tell us how to protect ourselves).
> I think for the most part health professionals answered specific questions about specific types of situations or types of transmission, and the media runs with overly broad statements when are then pushed/rejected by different parties.
> Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!http://bit.ly/37Ay6Cm
Highlighting
> They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus,
Also Fauci saying that there's "no reason" for anyone to be going around in a mask. (Not, "we don't know if it will help", not "there are more effective measures you could take", but "no reason".)
(Edit: This is from March, just to be clear that he's not saying that now.)
>Fauci: Right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks.
>LaPook: You’re sure of it? Because people are listening really closely to this.
>Fauci: …There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.
Sure, and what I think you have here is a bunch of people not being exact in their terminology and not explaining themselves, which makes their statements seem wrong out of context.
Consider, the situation is that people think if they get a mask, they are protected, and can go about their lives as they were. Also, there's a shortage of masks. Given the option of "stay away from large groups of people and public events" or "wear a mask and feel protected", saying "stop buying masks" might mean something slightly different then than it does now.
At the same time, I acknowledge that's a particularly egregious example. To that I say that the Surgeon General is a political appointee, and our government and the politicians that make it up (all of them) have failed us to various degrees. That interacts with what and how the health professionals have communicated with the public, but in a much less straightforward way (if there's different messaging coming from government health services and the general health community, and the government sources are counterproductive, who did you trust, and who do you blame?).
It is not an excuse. Those early wrong statements have cause irreparable harm that's still ongoing. If all they wanted was to ensure health professionals get it first they should have SAID so (lots of responsible people in this country, even if there are plenty of bad apples) and should have gone to the supply chain sources to ensure health professionals get it before regular citizens do. What they SHOULD NOT have done is to straight lie to the population that masks are not useful at all and now turn around. Trust has been lost and good luck rebuilding this before the pandemic infects everyone.
You can hold people liable for making the best guess at the time with the information they have, but you can't expect them to keep giving you advice then. All the professionals were saying "given what we know now" with all their statements, and revising them as they went along. The problem isn't that they were wrong, it's that when correcting themselves, that was immediately used as evidence that they were incompetent, which means people are then forced to choose between the new messaging of the professionals and the counter-messaging of the politicians (and media, since they carry that signal).
You can read Fauci's statements on what he said and why here[1], but the main things to thing about are:
- What did we know about transmission at the time those statements were made?
- Where was the outbreak at those times? Localized to specific areas, or nation-wide?
- Was it responsible to report to the whole nation that they should be wearing masks given those facts? What if we know there's not enough masks, and that means masks go to areas that don't need them?
The bottom line is, should we have expected anyone to act differently given those conditions and that knowledge at that time? You can note someone made a wrong decision in the past, but if they made the correct decision given the information they have, you can't rationally hold them accountable for the outcome (and if we're not speaking rationally, then we're not actually discussing anything, just airing grievances).
> The bottom line is, should we have expected anyone to act differently given those conditions and that knowledge at that time?
Yes? This isn't a school classroom. It's okay to cheat on the test. You know who's best at handling this because you know they handled it last time. You ask your boss to ask his boss to get on the line with Chou Jih-Haw and ask for some of his best people. They're an allied nation with close ties who want even closer ties. They will gladly help.
And this isn't news. People were saying this in February, in March, in April. People whose full time job is other things knew this.
The real problem is that American public health institutions have NIH (haha, a pun!) syndrome.
> You know who's best at handling this because you know they handled it last time. You ask your boss to ask his boss to get on the line with Chou Jih-Haw and ask for some of his best people. They're an allied nation with close ties who want even closer ties. They will gladly help.
You think that's Fauci's call? That's Trump's call. You're blaming healthcare professional's for doing what was best given the knowledge and resource they had available. I've made it pretty clear that the politicians failed us, and you've just pointed out another way.
> And this isn't news. People were saying this in February, in March, in April. People whose full time job is other things knew this.
All this does presuppose they have any actual help they could provide. It's unlikely they were willing to ship us a few tens (or hundreds!) of millions of N95 masks.
> The real problem is that American public health institutions have NIH (haha, a pun!) syndrome.
The problem is that they are beholden to the politicians, and even more so now, where appointees that speak out using their experience but contradict the party line are replaced.
There's been a lot of talk about how Trump is eroding people's faith in government and institutions, and here we have a prime example of that, where the institutions were clearly dysfunctional for obvious reasons that have to do with the executive branch, and we still have people shooting the messengers.
I was "educated" by health professionals that said masks do not help you avoid infection, despite showing paper after paper that they do (PPE is so fundamental to infection control the whole health professional - anti-mask things was so random).
That includes my county health department (I asked if they would arrest me if I put a mask on or didn't take my mask off on a crowded transit vehicle - they said they would STRONGLY encourage me not to wear a mask on crowded transit vehicles if I was "healthy" despite my higher level of risk and that I shouldn't believe "disinformation". A month later they issued a mask mandate!)
Masks are cheap. For 10 cents to $1 you can save a life - perhaps cheapest intervention out there.
I noted this in a reply to a sibling comment, but I think there should be a real difference in how you view health advice from a government agency, and from general healthcare professionals and the healthcare community. Your county health department is subject to political pressure, even if not directly. If National health agencies are issuing guidelines, states may use those as references, and local agencies might use the state or national ones, but probably aren't going to go out on too much of a limb to counteract them because it endangers that local agency in case they are wrong.
Unfortunately, health recommendations regarding this outbreak have been seen as fair game from both sides for political plays (there's no point in debating why or who started it for this discussion), and as such recommendations from the top had a political bent.
If there is a difference between what healthcare professionals and government agencies employing healthcare professionals recommended, we should note that and target our ire to the correct location.
> There are many inputs that go into something as simple as a recommendation of "should the general public wear masks", including "are there enough masks for health professionals currently"
When there was a toilet paper shortage, businesses were still able to get their supplies since they used a different supply chain compared to the end consumer. I'm surprised that this isn't the same case with PPE.
The separate supply chain for toilet paper was because the products are fundamentally different (different kind of paper on different rolls), low margin, and expensive to convert.
PPE is often literally the same product sold in consumer vs. healthcare markets. Sure, the distributors may be different, but it's the same goods from the same factories, and often the same packaging.
Denmark didn't go all out on masks initially but curbed the pandemic by socially distancing and shutting down early.
Masks are currently not required in public transport across the country, but that changes this Saturday. Up until last week I can count on one hand how many people I have seen wearing masks.
Now that people seem to have forgotten what social distancing means, masks are a useful tool. But if everyone just keeps their distance, they're not a must have.
Such KF94 masks are non-washable, and must be handled with much care since you will be breathing whatever particles get on it from your hands, hair and environment. Accidental mask contamination is an issue and really negates the whole idea of masks for self-protection, so please be careful.
Much less pathogen is needed to get you sick if it is stuck to something covering your breathing pathways on every breath.
Your surgical mask reduces your risk of getting covid by about 30%.
Your N95 mask reduces your risk of getting covid by about 99.9%.
Why even wear a surgical mask?
Anyway, I think the issue with going to the beach isn’t the part where you play in the open air on the beach. It’s where a bunch of people go to a beach house and drink a bunch of beer in a small room.
To prevent others from getting covid from _you_ [0]
N95 masks are more expensive, take more effort (and training?) to use correctly and have limited reusability IIRC.
As a society, it's more efficient if everyone wears surgical masks, because that means every infected person is also wearing one, even those that don't know (yet) that they are covid positive. So in my opinion, it's a good thing if countries force everyone to wear them.
Good surgical masks are much nicer to breath in then fabric ones.
> In EVERY other country you can buy masks, and they were strongly encouraged, that prevented YOU from getting sick.
What? I’m East Asian from a country known for mask wearing and this is definitely not how mask wearing is treated. It’s definitely to protect other people from you!
I'm still surprised there is so much misinformation about this. There are two categories of masks. The first category only prevent you from spreading the disease. These include paper surgical masks, cloth masks and those blue disposable paper masks. These are only made to prevent you from spreading droplets in the air from your moth and nose. If someone with covid isn't wearing a mask this category won't do anything prevent you from catching it.
The second category are masks such as N95, P95, N99, P100, etc. Things like disposable painter masks or reusable masks with replaceable filters. These are meant to filter out particulate in the air and they do reduce the likelihood of you getting the disease. To call your mask P95 it must be certified by NIOSH and tested to meet the given rating, ie P95 must filter out 95 percent of particulate and be resistant to oil.
In the beginning the US and CDC were not recommending using masks. I believe the main reason for this was, not that they didn't believe it was effective, but that they were worried about a shortage for health care professionals.
> I believe the main reason for this was, not that they didn't believe it was effective, but that they were worried about a shortage for health care professionals.
Yeah, but instead of saying that they lied and said masks don't work.
I wonder how much of the current anti-mask sentiments arise from these lies.
Which person lied? I did not hear the claim (from a public health authority) that masks were not effective in preventing transmission. I did hear the claim that we are unsure if masks provide protection for the user (rather than just protecting others from the user), which still reflects our current knowledge for most mask types AFAIK. I did hear the recommendation against buying masks early on to protect the supplies for more critical users.
I also don't see how you can blame the health authorities for this when half the political leadership in this country continually questioned (and in some cases still questions) the efficacy of masks and successfully politicized the issue.
>“What the World Health Organization [WHO] and the CDC [The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] have reaffirmed in the last few days is that they do not recommend the general public wear masks.”
But in neither of those cases did anyone say, you shouldn't wear a mask because they won't work. They recommended against wearing masks because they thought the harms of people wearing masks would outweigh the benefits at that point. I tried to make the distinction between saying "we not do not recommend the public wear masks" and "masks do not help prevent sick people from spreading the virus" clear in my original comment. All comments I saw were the former statement, which I think is not misleading the public or lying, not the latter.
It's possible they were wrong w.r.t. the harms outweighing the benefits but that's easier to say in hindsight.
"They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus" reads to me exactly as "you shouldn't wear a mask because they won't work".
Exactly, and at that time my wife and I were wearing masks (that we already had from before the pandemic!) going in stores and people gave us looks, made comments, etc. That is what happens when our leaders are irresponsible, ineffective and plain stupid.
Not really, at least not Fauci. What he said was they wouldn't work for most Americans. What he was implying is that most Americans wouldn't bother to learn to wear them properly.
I think he was right. If your glasses are fogging, RainX isn't your answer. Make the damn mask fit better.
Anthony Fauci quoted below with his primary motivations:
"I don't regret anything I said then because in the context of the time in which I said it, it was correct. We were told in our task force meetings that we have a serious problem with the lack of PPEs and masks for the health providers who are putting themselves in harm's way every day to take care of sick people," Fauci told O'Donnell.
"When it became clear that we could get the infection could be spread by asymptomatic carriers who don't know they're infected, that made it very clear that we had to strongly recommend masks," he said.
"And also, it soon became clear that we had enough protective equipment and that cloth masks and homemade masks were as good as masks that you would buy from surgical supply stores," Fauci added. "So in the context of when we were not strongly recommending it, it was the correct thing."
But a leader speaking out to the population is not the same thing as an engineer/researcher formulating a theory and correcting themselves as information comes through in their research notes. One of the important things you have to consider as a leader is political capital, which is a limited resource. Every time you tell people that they should do something that is different from what they wanted to do, you are burning that capital. You cannot change your mind "as new information comes through" every day, soon enough, everyone stops trusting whatever you say and are back to doing whatever they think is best.
So if you think masks _can_ help (now or in the future, with training, used correctly, when we have enough of them in the future, etc etc) then DO NOT say they do not help and then come back to that because you have "new information".
If the problem was sourcing PPEs for health professionals why didn't the government use emergency powers to seize shipments and ban selling of such critical products to the general population? At least temporarily while building stocks for health professionals (which I'm surprised we didn't already have stocks of, you know, that seems like normal preparation procedure for a national health emergency?)
Yes- he's negotiating a difficult position. At the time there was a big concern that people wouldn't wear the masks properly. "It takes training" was the implication.
But all the good quality evidence we have so far struggles to find a benefit to masks. This is especially true for DIY cloth masks that are being mandated for the public, but it's also true of high quality N95 masks. We only see a benefit when we drop the quality of evidence down, but this means we have less confidence in the result.
> RCT evidence was limited and showed no effect but accumulated evidence from retrospective case controls and cohorts all showed these strategies decreased transmission. N95 respirator mask OR 0.17 (CI 0.07–0.43), Gloves OR 0.32 (CI 0.23–0.45), Gowns OR 0.33(CI 0.24–0.45), All OR 0.09 (CI 0.02–0.35)
Note that this is for an N95 mask, not worse masks like surgical loop masks or cloth face coverings.
There's some research looking at post-operative wound infection rates. It can't find a benefit to surgeons wearing masks in clean surgery.
> We included three trials, involving a total of 2106 participants. There was no statistically significant difference in infection rates between the masked and unmasked group in any of the trials. We identified no new trials for this latest update.
> Authors' conclusions
> From the limited results it is unclear whether the wearing of surgical face masks by members of the surgical team has any impact on surgical wound infection rates for patients undergoing clean surgery.
> Conclusion: From the limited randomized trials it is still not clear that whether wearing surgical face masks harms or benefit the patients undergoing elective surgery.
Here's the most recent, very high quality, paper about masks and covid-19. This wasn't available when Public Health organisations were making their recommendations.
> Although direct evidence is limited, the optimum use of face masks, in particular N95 or similar respirators in health-care settings and 12–16-layer cotton or surgical masks in the community, could depend on contextual factors; action is needed at all levels to address the paucity of better evidence. Eye protection might provide additional benefits. Globally collaborative and well conducted studies, including randomised trials, of different personal protective strategies are needed regardless of the challenges, but this systematic appraisal of currently best available evidence could be considered to inform interim guidance.
This para is saying we just don't have the evidence yet. It's saying people should wear facemasks because masks may help, but we don't know, and maybe masks cause harm.
> Interpretation
> The findings of this systematic review and meta-analysis support physical distancing of 1 m or more and provide quantitative estimates for models and contact tracing to inform policy. Optimum use of face masks, respirators, and eye protection in public and health-care settings should be informed by these findings and contextual factors. Robust randomised trials are needed to better inform the evidence for these interventions, but this systematic appraisal of currently best available evidence might inform interim guidance.
Look at the difference in the description of distancing (supported) and masks (optimum use may help).
> Face mask use could result in a large reduction in risk of infection (n=2647; aOR 0·15, 95% CI 0·07 to 0·34, RD −14·3%, −15·9 to −10·7; low certainty), with stronger associations with N95 or similar respirators compared with disposable surgical masks or similar (eg, reusable 12–16-layer cotton masks; pinteraction=0·090; posterior probability >95%, low certainty).
Tucked away in this para is "low certainty". This comes from GRADE. Low certainty means that masks may be much more effective, or much less effective, than they estimate.
>> In the beginning the US and CDC were not recommending using masks. I believe the main reason for this was, not that they didn't believe it was effective, but that they were worried about a shortage for health care professionals.
This happened anyway. Telling noble lies to the population just increases populism and makes people distrust the government even more. Which is paying off wonderfully right about now.
There are no studies that I know of that show that cloth masks provide protection for the wearer. The consensus now seems to be that they are effective at decreasing the likelihood that a sick person spreads it to a healthy person if sick people wear them.
In addition to what other commenters are saying just like vaccines masks only really work on a population level and even there they don't work as well as vaccines. The figures I've seen claim something in the range of a 20 to 40 percent reduction in risk of catching from an infectious person. That isn't anything like what I'd call protection
The argument isn't about whether masks do or do not work (they do). The argument is about whether or not it makes sense to shut down the entire economy when only the very sick, very old, or very obese are really at serious risk.
The obvious solution is: If you are at risk, or worried about COVID, don't leave your house. To everyone else: wear a mask, stay away from people, follow the precautions...but go do what you like (mostly).
What we're doing now is the worst of both worlds: not enough to actually eliminate the virus (not gonna happen in the US...it's just not. Welcome to America) and just enough to mess up the economy and put a lot of businesses out of business (and also just generally make life annoying).
So it seems to me pretty clear: let people do what they want as long as they wear a mask, and just pass a bloody law that says you can't fire someone cause they don't want to come into work because they are overweight. Seems a lot cheaper to just support those people staying home with a welfare payout/BI than shutting down the country for no reason.
> The argument is about whether or not it makes sense to shut down the entire economy when only the very sick, very old, or very obese are really at serious risk.
Tell that to my buddy who almost died. Healthy, early 40s, no pre-existing conditions.
Also... there are plenty of people who do not fall in out-group rhetoric of being “Very sick, very old, or very obese” who are extremely vulnerable. Or, is that you just define “very sick” as anyone who is not like you?
Outliers exist in any distribution. Healthy people die suddenly every day. Of course it’s difficult when it’s someone close to us and I’m sorry for your friend’s struggles, but it happens.
Somehow other first world countries manage to keep infection rates under control and not completely kill the economy. Maybe they are super lucky and we are very unlucky or maybe they have better leadership?
This makes it clear "nobody successfully proved" really means "I didn't bother to listen". The messaging on masks has long been "they reduce transmission by infected people", not "they prevent you from getting it".
(1) Best available evidence indicates pretty clearly that masks will prevent you from getting it sometimes. This is sharply different from early messaging that masks could increase your risk due to them somehow being viral-magnets and thus you risked infecting yourself.
(2) We have done many studies on many viruses and the consensus seems to be that the initial viral dose matters a great deal -- the lower the dose, the lower the severity. It's also fairly clearly established that, at their worst expected performance, masks will lower the dose you receive.
This is a disease in which the severity matters a great deal. We see wildly different ranges of outcomes/levels of severity.
And indeed, many of the worse outcomes are setting where it's reasonable to assume that there was a significant viral dose.
I think it's irresponsible to promote the idea that masks only help protect others from the wearer. While they clearly do that, the balance of probabilities of available data strongly indicates that they sometimes protect the wearer.
We've even had studies as specific as having examined masks with SARS-CoV-1 -- to pretend that none of our medical knowledge indicated that masks are helpful for SARS-CoV-2 is insane.
The "risk compensation" concern which was claimed as one of the reasons to pretend that masks weren't helpful has been thoroughly debunked as a false concern. Additionally, while they were busy talking about "lack of evidence", their "risk compensation" concerns were also completely lacking a foundation in evidence.
The whole situation disgusts me. "Doctor knows best" and "we can't tell people the truth because they might not respond the way we want" attitude has to stop -- it destroys the fabric of society and the credibility of health experts.
Why would people ever trust words of officials when it is obvious to anyone paying attention that their messaging was focused on avoiding blame for contingency planning failures instead of focused on providing true, accurate, not-misleading and helpful information.
Here's an example from the United States Surgeon General:
Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!
They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!
You want people to believe that your plan is to use these ineffective masks to protect healthcare workers? Are the healthcare workers a different species than the general public?
The head of the strategy of Sweden, keep repeating that he is not sure masks are working, how you can be so sure that he is wrong, and decides that's others who are not listening ?
Of course it is clear that if someone has covid and wear a mask, the probability to transmit covid will decrease (I was actually encourage people to wear a mask 6 months ago), but will it stop ? no. people can still transmit it by touching you. So yeah this is decreasing the risk, but is it decreasing the risk high enough that it will prevent the virus to spread ? Nobody has answered the question yet.
In France the mask is mandatory almost everywhere and still the number of cases keep increasing
The head of Sweden's response is quoted as saying:
> "If we were to run into the same disease, knowing exactly what we know about it today, I think we would end up doing something in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done."
and Sweden wound up with de-facto lockdowns anyways, as many people did it on their own without government instruction. The end result: Same economic damage as the other Nordic countries, but substantially higher deaths.
> He's on record saying mask requirements will be needed if cases started going back up:
So if cases started going back up, which is not the case for now, so this is not an argument
> The end result: Same economic damage as the other Nordic countries, but substantially higher deaths.
You compare the economic impact of one country which was hit by the virus (Sweden) and one which was not (Germany,Finland, ...). What is going to happen if the virus restart in Germany and Finland and not in Sweden ?
Back in mid-May, when the US was still behaving pretty well, the angry right-wing facebookers started talking about how great Sweden was. So I did a per-capita death calculation and Sweden's was 30% higher than the US's.
Of course, a lot of the US has lost patience with the difficulty of safety, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's worse now. But that's not because of lockdown not being effective. In fact, it's the opposite.
And let's not forget, in the US H1N1 infected 60M people and only killed 12K of them.
There's a common talking point that because masks aren't perfectly effective, they therefore aren't effective at all or worthy as a safety mechanism. It's a total farce of an argument.
Tegnell is a fucking idiot. Look at the numbers, look at how it spreads, look at the countries that were doing OK at first and why. That's Taiwan, South Korea, Iceland, Singapore. Look at what Sweden did (nothing). Look at Swedish GDP change compared to neighboring countries.
US didn't have a federal strategy to deal with the pandemic. They shot at their own foot and didn't give themselves a chance to be successful.
The rest of the (developed, and many underdeveloped) world dealt with it and are moving on. I'm watching Champions league finals on TV and Wuhan pool party clips on twitter, thinking wtf went wrong here.
They did at the outset of the current administration but chose to fire the people trained for 'reasons'. When the pandemic finally pressed on the country, the game plan handed down from the previous admin had been abandoned for years at that point by the current administration.
"Why should American taxpayers throw good money at pandemic planning when they only happen about once every hundred years in the US? The last one was what, almost exactly a hundred years ago, what are the odds it would happen during this administration?"
The logic remains breathtaking, and the irony would be delicious if it weren't so deadly.
> The rest of the (developed, and many underdeveloped) world dealt with it and are moving on.
I'm not really sure on that, lets take greece, which was praised for their strategy (I was in greece during the lockdown). They didnt have a strategy, they just locked down before there was an outbreak and blocked flights, so no spread. Now they have an outbreak because they stopped all there restrictions. They were just lucky
Look at New Zealand, their strategy is to prevent anyone to enter the country with covid, well that works as long as not a log of people fly to NZ. Now that flights have restarted, they have like 3 cases so they lockdown the entire city, well, doesnt seem very smart in my opinion.
The only countries which are doing well, are the Asian countries, China (can't really trust their figure), Taiwan, south korea same as NZ, but restricting all freedom of citizens.
The smartest country of all, is Sweden, never locked down, explained to citizen the situation. Managed to get the situation under control without any lockdown, and probably will reach herd immunity before anyone else. Time will tell this is too soon to judge, but they seem well positioned for winning
>The smartest country of all, is Sweden, never locked down, explained to citizen the situation. Managed to get the situation under control without any lockdown, and probably will reach herd immunity before anyone else. Time will tell this is too soon to judge, but they seem well positioned for winning
I keep seeing this narrative but I can never find the data to support it. When you look at the data, Sweden has the worst of both worlds.
1. Among their neighbors, only Germany has more deaths than Sweden. Norway, Denmark and Finland have fewer almost an order of magnitude less cases and deaths.
2. Despite not being government sanctioned, people still chose to self isolate meaning that the still suffered the economic fallout of that decision. Turns out, a global pandemic is bad for business whether or not your government decides to shut everything down.
There is no metric by which Sweden is doing any better than anyone else, and is doing a lot worse than their neighbors.
>> 1. Among their neighbors, only Germany has more deaths than Sweden. Norway, Denmark and Finland have fewer almost an order of magnitude less cases and deaths.
Geographic comparisons are of limited usefulness; MA had 10x the death rate of near neighbors NH,VT& ME. There are too many other factors to consider. Sweden still did better than UK, France, Spain, Italy and many others.
>> 2. Despite not being government sanctioned, people still chose to self isolate meaning that the still suffered the economic fallout of that decision. Turns out, a global pandemic is bad for business whether or not your government decides to shut everything down.
Mobility data would suggest otherwise; no masks, kids still in school etc. Life has continued with some restrictions. We could have done the same with similar outcomes. Economy definitely took a hit, but less so than other eurorzone countries.
>> There is no metric by which Sweden is doing any better than anyone else, and is doing a lot worse than their neighbors.
The fact that the pandemic is effectively done in Sweden is one. We still dont have an exit strategy.
>>The fact that the pandemic is effectively done in Sweden is one.
Acting like this is a foregone conclusion is the height of arrogance. Diseases spread in waves. They could just be at the low point between two waves.
We won't know until years from now. Just asserting you're right when there are still this many unknown factors smacks of someone looking for data after coming to a conclusion.
fair point, but do you know that the under 65 excess deaths metrics for Sweden is already almost identical to previous years ie. if you were looking at the charts you would not even know they had a pandemic. I suspect "years from now" looking at the US metrics it will be similar.
You can clearly see excess mortality for Sweden, higher than previous years.
Edit: missed the under 65 bit, would be interested in seeing that data for Sweden, but you can see the collated graphs for all the countries that contribute and you definitely can spot spikes in the lower age ranges.
This is a very specific claim. I don't doubt you but something like this should always be backed up with sources or people will dismiss you immediately.
The metric by which it's doing better, is freedom. Nobody has been forced to change their lifestyle, if they did, thats because they decided so.
The number of case is under control [1], almost no death now (and not hiding after a lockdown, really no death) so probably less death in the future compared to those countries
The key metric Sweden is winning at is that they're already at the finish line. They never locked down and their death counts are the lowest they've been since before the pandemic. Single digits and zero in recent days.
No, they are not. Death rate is low everywhere in North hemisphere right now because of summer period. In winter, death rate will climb back to 4%, like in Brazil right now.
I don’t understand how Sweden could be a good example to follow: they now are at 573 deaths per million, close to Italy 585. (France is 466, Germany 110, Norway 48, all flat. US 585 and rising fast)
If you look at Belgium 859 deaths per millions, Sweden (and the US) could go much higher without any preventive action (I believe Sweden is now acting more in line with other countries?).
The Champions League finals definitely aren't an indication this part of the world has dealt with it and is moving on. There's a huge amount of intrusive Covid-19 restrictions around those, from obvious things like no spectators to putting the entire teams in isolation (compliance has been... mixed), and even then I have my doubts that they'd be able to finish the season if it went on any longer due to the exponential growth in cases again in Europe.
Also we shouldn't forget that "American independence" really also means "selfish". Many Americans can care less who dies, as long as it directly doesn't affect them, thus fights about simple things like mask compliance, or not going to a bar for a while.
That in addition to the federal government not supporting people and businesses while the economy is shut down, leads to this obvious outcome we're experiencing right now.
If people like you wont wear a mask or social distance and the portion that are asymptomatic pass it around you will help it spread far and wide maximizing the chances that even careful people will become ill eventually.
Wearing a mask is mostly about keeping the respiratory droplets of the ill, including the 40-50% which don't have obvious symptoms from spreading around. If only the vulnerable wear masks they wont be safe.
I'm sorry, but I'm not willing to sacrifice a lot of my freedom to prevent unhealthy or old people to die. You could tell me that I'm wrong, but as far as I know, I'm the only one able to know how I want to live my life
That's the thing though...You don't need to lock yourself inside, just wear a damn mask when you go do your stuff. For example, I wear a mask to go run on the boardwalk because I like running there. It honestly takes 0 effort to wear the mask and I get to do what I want.
Sure, you can be selfish, but you're also negatively impacting society and saying that you don't care. You do you, but I don't get it.
If a gym can't be open and avoid killing people who don't actually use the gym then it can't be open. Classic example of your right to swing your fist ends at my nose.
I do think it's best if we are able to do certain things with appropriate precautions (masks inside, things outside when possible, etc).
Sorry if I was a bit harsh - had someone yell "America" at me while running with a mask the other day but I shouldn't project that frustration onto others.
Oh come on. How is just wearing a mask or working out at home during a global pandemic that's literally killing millions "sacrificing a lot of my freedom". You're selfish, and kids in history classes are going to look back on people like you forever and question why people were so selfish and stupid.
If you're going to attack others for their alleged ignorance maybe you should get basic numbers right? Covid hasn't killed 'millions', it hasn't even killed one million people. You're off by at least an order of magnitude.
Well, we’re at 800k “official” numbers, but when looking at excess deaths for countries with data available vs official numbers nearly all are undercounting the COVID deaths, or at least were at some point. There can be many reasons for this, such as the testing capacity at the beginning of the outbreak but I would definitely say we are over 1 Million.
This is uncalled for. Lot of exercises cannot be done at home without required equipment unless you are a Hollywood actor and have a huge mansion with private gym and equipment. Think of weight lifting, power lifting etc. Impossible to do at home for most people (meaning not rich 0.1%).
You are assuming you have spare room for this equipment (ignoring that the prices you quoted are quite high and actually it costs more for serious equipment if you want realistic weights of 200-300 pounds which is not even that heavy).
I rent a room in downtown of a big city and I simply don't have space for equipment (my room is mostly just bed with small kitchen and bathroom). Don't assume everybody is rich and owns a house with spare room / garage where you can put equipment.
I am 30+ years old and never lived in a place where I would have spare space for gym equipment. You must be very privileged if you have that (top 1% at least).
I didn’t downvote you. (I don’t downvote if it’s worth commenting.) If I had to guess, people downvoted the hyperbolic nature of your comment. Lifting is clearly a middle class activity. If it’s too expensive for a working software developer, then they have other priorities, which is fine.
And by the way I looked at that reddit and almost all posts are from the gym, to do any of those exercises (seriously, I mean normal weight like 200-300 pounds for squats or deadlift) at home you must be very rich and have a large house with basically a private gym.
I agree it’s hard for city apartment dwellers to build a home gym (although a set of kettlebells can get most people by). But anyone with a small house and/or a spare room can easily and fairly inexpensively build a home gym.
I agree, if you got a house with spare room then it should be easy to build a basic gym, if you don't drive and don't need car, you can even use garage as a small gym. But in apartments it's not so easy unless they are quite big. Once I own a house I would probably convert garage into a gym as I don't really have interest in cars or driving.
Good luck finding equipment at those prices. I was looking to pick up some extra equipment a little while back and everywhere was either sold out or crazy marked up because everyone is trying to build a home gym now. Just rechecked dick sporting goods and "Due to exceptional demand, Weight Sets are unavailable in your area".
A person can workout on the cheap though, and still gain strength and mass. A few kettlebells and a pull up bar can deliver a crushing workout to even the most in fit person. Kettlebells in particular are easily portable.
Pull up bar is not something I can't install in my apartment as landlord won't approve. I am only renting so can't do many modifications here. I would love to have that option.
The door frame pull up bars are non-permanent, and can work in many cases. At most you might have to paint a bit.
If you're in a city there has to a playground nearby providing all sorts of options.
I think people just get too tied to a gym, when there are countless options to get really good workouts if the gym is unavailable for a period of time.
As someone who power lifted for many years I get it. I needed > 500 pounds in order to max. But, I also know that's on the extreme end. Even then though, give me a 70+ pound kettlebell and I can crush my posterior chain using cleans and snatches.
It is possible to get good workouts with minimal equipment.
Yes, I agree that a second floor apartment is a bad place for a gym. I disagree that this equipment is the domain of the super rich. What I listed is less than the cost of a decent, not fancy, road bike.
Yeah consider the additional rent you have to pay excluding the machines. An additional room for your apartment is more expensive than a $50 gym subscription.
>I'm sorry, but I'm not willing to sacrifice a lot of my freedom to prevent unhealthy or old people to die. You could tell me that I'm wrong, but as far as I know, I'm the only one able to know how I want to live my life
The problem is that you are effectively deciding how others live their lives through your careless actions. Everyone should have a say on how they want to live their lives, not just you.
I was warned very early, end of January, and locked down my family about a week before required. I track someone who reviews the literature and news and give bi-weekly updates on the state of knowledge and politics surrounding the pandemic.
Originally he erred way on the side of caution, because we did not know enough. We learn more every week, and his current outlook is a lot like what you just wrote.
The big remaining problem is this is not going away anytime soon. There's more politics than science going on, and there have been institutional failures world-wide from top to bottom.
>nobody successfully proved to these people (me included)
>sacrificing is the worst solution for everyone
>this is not your fault if they [high risk people] catch it
>we stop everything for the rest of our lives
This is nothing more than a tantrum. Nobody can "prove" it. Humanity is still learning about COVID-19. No model is going to predict the outcome of closing the economy. It has not been done in modern times at this scale.
>0.5% death rate for population
Google is showing the death rate at ~3% worldwide. 6 times higher than your nonsense 0.5% water-level figure.
You're commenting later down the chain that you wish to frolic at the beach. The fact is, you're sick of inconvenience and will stomp your feet until someone hears how sick of it you are. Go cry elsewhere.
It is important to differentiate terminology here. According to DDG (which closely aligns with Google's results) the case fatality rate, the ratio of deaths to confirmed case, is 3.5%. For the death rate, the ratio of deaths relative to population size, is 0.01%.
Confirmed Cases: 21,991,954
Deaths: 777,018
World Pop.: ~7,800,000,000
Case Fatality Rate = Deaths/Confirmed Cases = ~3.5%
It would be ridiculous to assume the Deaths/World Population figure is the risk for yourself.
That's similar to claiming that, because only 93% of all humans ever born have died so far, your risk of dying is 93%. It may be mathematically sound, but completely ignores the context of the problem: That for the living/not-yet-infected the result is still outstanding.
You've just identified the difference between "Proven" and "Proven to me." The former has already been done, but obviously the latter requires a person to not actively refuse to listen.
If you're ready to listen, the proof is already there.
> Maybe because nobody successfully proved to these people (me included) that this sacrifice is useful.
It's not a matter of proof, it's a matter of weighing the cost of action vs the possible outcome. Just like insurance, there's a low cost of action (low continuous payments) to hedge against a possible large negative outcome. It's also worth noting that some types of insurance are mandated because people are bad at calculating risk in general, and when they fail, we as a society don't necessarily want that to have too extreme an outcome, so we have societal guards in place to help. Mandated insurance shifts the burden from society (taxes) back the the individual. We see this in health insurance, car insurance, home insurance, etc. Sometimes it depends on region (some localities requires fire/earthquake/flood, etc insurance).
> people who are at risk of dying can protect themselves even around sick people (wearing a mask, staying at home, washing hands, ...)
To clarify, wearing a mask, as recommended by most officials currently, is not about protecting oneself, but about protecting those around you in the case you are unknowingly contagious. It greatly reduces the spread of your contagion, it does not greatly reduce your chance of being infected unless you are using a high-grade mask very securely fastened such that all airflow is through the mask and not around it.
> so this is not your fault if they catch it
It very well may be your fault if someone catches it if you're contagious but ignoring recommendations about avoiding gatherings of people, or not wearing a mask, etc. They could literally catch it directly from you with little ability to block it. A sneeze can travel very far, yelling expels particles with more force, and direct contact with people or surfaces they touch shortly after and then may touch themselves or something else they touch after washing their hands is not something easily protected against.
> but you need to stop living your life.
This, right here is the crux of the issue. What is being asked for from people ranges from not working to curtailing social group gatherings and activities. The work portion is horrible, and life altering, and actual affects people living their lives. The group activities being classified as "living your life" is both a) relatively recent for the vast majority of the world, which did not have the free time or money to do such things on a regular basis decades ago, and b) shows a complete mismatch by people of what the need and what they like and want.
A vanishingly small number of people actually need to go to the gym (those in physical therapy that need certain equipment), and the others can get basic exercise at home or outside without anyone around. Nobody needs to go to a bar. That we classify these niceties as "living our life" is really just a shift of priorities of modern people in first world countries away from actually having to worry about survival. But this is a matter of survival, and those thought patterns are doing us real harm as a society during this crisis.
> It is not that people don't want to sacrifice, it is just that scarifying is the worst solution for everyone
No, it's that people are unwilling to separate simple and (relatively) easy sacrifices from hard sacrifices, and acting like they're all the same. Get food from restaurants, but limit or eliminate the in-restaurant eating/time (you don't have to order door-dash, just pick it up). You don't have to stop drinking, or talking to friends, but you shouldn't do those in person when avoidable.
Collectively, people stopping the non-essential gatherings such as gyms and bars will not only reduce the spread and save lives, if everyone did it we might get back to the point where the increase in cases was so low more optional services could reopen again, lessening the economic impact.
It's not about scarifying, it's about making people actually understand how this works, and how their actions actually play into this when carried out by massive amounts of people. And when it comes to bars and gyms and people being unwilling to change their habit, it is also a bit about people not wanting to sacrifice. In the grand scheme of things, those are fairly small changes to ask for, and if people can't even bother to do that, what hope is there that they'll follow through with other things?
Masks protect people who aren't sick yet. Their primary mode of operation is making it harder for the virus to spread. But since we don't know when people get sick they have to wear a mask before they get sick for masks to be effective.
Introverts vs extroverts. Humans are social animals. Socialization is a basic human need. It is much harder for some people to stay inside and not socialize than others.
We are now on month 7 of being told to not socialize or see or do anything. I continue to obey the orders, but I totally get why some people are starting to crack.
> "Keep your distance, wear a mask, and stick to small groups" is not the same as "do not socialize".
Ok, but then we have people doing solo activities, all by themselves, minding their own business -- getting arrested by lunatics[1] because we said no beach allowed during Covid[2]!
You'll find California (and everywhere else) has loosened up substantially on outdoor activities, as we have substantially more information in recent months on outdoor versus indoor transmission. We've learned a lot since April about COVID-19.
people who act like joggers are the real threat mostly don't exercise, just as people who say things like "I don't understand why people need to get together" mostly are introverts, people who think the anti-lockdown protestors are lunatics generally don't own brick and mortor businesses, etc. people are scared and want someone to blame, ideally someone who isn't like them. and it's naturally much easier to see the things you do as essential, but the things you don't do as nonessential
Maybe some people think enforcing compliance is about safety.
This whole discussion is absurd. If people actually did comply, then they wouldn't get arrested and we would have had a far more successful outcome nationwide.
No one (statistically) was spreading it at the beach, so all the hand-wringing and blaming now and then that you're engaging in has shown to be arrogant and incorrect.
We said "No beach during Covid" because a bunch of lunatics flooded the open beaches.
And while the beach may not be a problem, those same lunatics flood the gas stations, Walmarts, etc. and DON'T WEAR MASKS.
In addition, California never really locked down. California has almost continuously had an R0 above 1.0. Mostly due to the lunatics in Southern California.
If you want to open the beaches and arrest anybody not local, fine. The problem with THAT is that you now have to patrol for it--which creates in-person contact.
So, we shut the beaches completely. Sorry you can't surf. Tell your population cohort to wear your masks and stay the hell out of parties and maybe California will get below R0 one day.
Or not. And this crap can continue until we get a vaccine.
Why is it not OK to jog on the beach by yourself? You don't seem to have an answer for that.
Don't allow large gatherings? OK fine, I might object to this, but I can see the other side at least.
Not allowing individuals to do individual activities? That seems misguided at best.
After all, we do allow Ice Cream Parlors to be open, and outdoor seating at restaurants where you sit in close proximity to other people who are not wearing masks... how is that better than jogging on the beach all by yourself?
They aren't better, and none of this is actually about safety nor is it about "Flattening the Curve" anymore. We flattened the curve long, long ago.
No, it's not about safety, it's about compliance. You will comply, regardless of how illogical or contradictory certain County Health Official Edicts are.
> Not allowing individuals to do individual activities? That seems misguided at best.
Please reread my post. I already told you what the problem was.
A zillion people flooded the open beaches. The problem is that those zillion people then go places other than the beach and spread Covid.
The only real way to prevent that is to simply close the beach. Yes, that sucks for locals. So far, you have not presented an alternative solution. "Reopen the things!" is NOT a solution--it's idiocy.
However, you know what sucks more for locals? Getting Covid 19 from a bunch of out-of-towners because you work at the grocery stores, gas stations, etc. that they all flood after the beach.
Stop being a selfish prat. If you just have to be outdoors, go hike the mountains.
The solution to your problem is to not allow large gatherings on the beach. That's pretty simple, right? We're doing that already everywhere else - lines to get into stores, etc. Or enforce wearing a mask? There's plenty of ways to do this that don't result in a squad of cops running down a solo jogger, or a task force of patrol boats and helicopters for a solo surfer... just because the Mayor or County Health Official said it must be so!
So, what's wrong, for the 3rd time, with a solo jogger on the beach, with nobody around them?
The answer, for a 3rd time, is nothing.
> However, you know what sucks more for locals? Getting Covid 19 from a bunch of out-of-towners
You really think that risk doesn't exist for locals going to grocery stores too? Touching a can of food, then putting it back on the shelf? Handling paper money, grocery bags, etc.
What we have here are not rules for the sake of safety. What we have here are not rules for the sake of "Flattening the Curve".
No, we have rules for the sake of rules. They make some people feel safer, even though there's zero evidence to suggest they are effective at achieving their intended goals. The reason people are disobeying these "orders" is because the government has not done a sufficient job convincing people the rules are based on logic and actual science, not "science" and politics.
It is not inherently more risky to jog on the beach by yourself than to go sit at an outdoor restaurant, no mask, and be around a bunch of other people.
It would be intellectually dishonest to argue otherwise. Yet, here we are.
I think you're being really unreasonable here. He's not saying he went to a flood of people at the beach. He's saying that should not be allowed, and is asking why he should not be allowed to go jogging on the beach alone. Emphasizing the word AFTER doesn't make any sense.
There are ads on pretty much every medium that say "Stay Home", which is not at all what you're describing. To say "nobody is saying do not socialize" is untrue, but to say "We're not allowed to socialize" is also untrue.
Considering most states have been in full on shelter in place lock down mode, there aren't many places people can socialize anyways.
All of the normal places where you see people socialize have bee closed or went out business. Restaurants, bars, night clubs, sporting events, live music (festivals and stadiums) and many, many others.
It would be one thing to conform to what your saying, but its become hard if not impossible to find safe places where people CAN socialize, so they take what they get regardless of the risks to them or others.
I had just graduated college and moved to a new city on a new coast before lockdowns started. I essentially have no in-person social network to speak of, currently. My parents lived overseas up until a month ago. Folks my age (early 20s) are happy to socialize with their established friends. Less so with strangers. All the places shut down are the standard avenues for folks like me to meet new people. I was entirely alone for 4 months. My life was hell. And all the while my company talks about difficulties being at home with family, and figuring out childcare (and has freed up resources to help their employees do so). No mention, ever, of any effort to establish meetups for low-risk, early-career employees, not that I'd expect that. No one particularly cares about people in my situation (not that rare).
Comments like this and the ever popular "it's just a mask!" show a remarkable lack of awareness and understanding. Yes, that's perhaps overly selfish of me. Yes, there are people at serious risk, and many people dying or developing life-long serious complications. But this has been the worst period in my entire life, by far. I was regularly, very seriously, suicidal (have since moved back in with my parents now that they're stateside, starting to get better). All the policies and all the talk are oriented around having a network of close relations to fall back on. That doesn't exist for everyone.
I think cases like this are almost completely overlooked. I'm also concerned/saddened by young children who's parents just moved to a new town (moving is not uncommon when many can't afford mortgage/rent due to covid lay offs).
We're going to see pretty significant long term effects to both the economy and children / young people due to a lack of social development.
I couldn't even imagine how shitty being a 20 something in a new city would be now. Dating has to be practically non-existent.
Should say that I'm for and obey covid restrictions in my country (Canada), but I'm amoung the privileged few already working from home, and have a family and kids that keep me busy.
the media have consistently demonized people at beaches and parks. Lightfoot fenced off the beaches in Chicago, Newsom did the same in CA. It's ridiculous; and its why people are skeptical of their intentions.
No state in the USA is or has ever been "in full on shelter in place lock down mode" during the pandemic. Many states issued half-assed stay at home orders, which in practice ended up being voluntary and unenforced. Throughout it all, there were people who were out horsing around, doing whatever they wanted, and not facing legal consequences. Vanishingly few people were arrested for violating stay-at-home, despite it being legally enforceable as a misdemeanor. Thankfully most people did their part, but to call it "lock down" is a bit of an exaggeration.
>2. Why can't people socialize online? It's even easier nowadays. It might not be the same thing but it can get pretty close.
It is not anywhere near close. Video calls transfer speech, tone of voice, and facial expressions at best. Body language is a vital part of face-to-face communication, and there is no video call equivalent of leaning in towards someone or putting your hand on theirs.
I find the topic of introverts vs extraverts to be extremely fascinating. My wife and I are pretty big introverts, but she is somewhat shy whereas I am not. She loved group exercise due to the external motivation factor but has actively avoided getting into conversations in that setting.
I am also not one for striking up conversations with strangers but have been known to get quite chatty with people who initiate.
On the whole, both of us loved the lockdown for the 2-3 months but after that, not being able to see our close friends really started wearing on us. We were some of the first in our group to start expanding our quarantine units. Sometimes I need to remind myself of this, but the right amount of social interaction is a very rewarding and enriching part of the human experience.
> We are now on month 7 of being told to not socialize or see or do anything.
What? That's a pretty exaggerated misrepresentation of what's actually being recommended. You can socialize and see or do plenty while still obeying the recommendations. For instance, my elderly neighbors regularly socialize with others -- they just put chairs out on the driveway or patio and maintain two or three times the distance as they would before the pandemic.
I'm an extrovert. I can find ways to occupy my time. I've picked up drawing, meditation, and running. I want to talk to people in person, get drinks, go to shows, etc. It's not hard to find something else to do for a short amount of time in the grand scheme of things. Get a therapist if it's that difficult. Preventing the spread of disease is more important than hanging out with your friends. The burden of the disease falls on people like nurses, essential workers, etc. and you are making their jobs miserable because they can't even take any break now (this is the situation at mother's hospital). Just be less selfish. It's easy
Mid to late March after news of Italy started blowing up. Started with spring break extensions and "temporary shutdowns". It's incredible how quickly recent history gets mixed up..
Buy yeah, we are just finishing out month 5 and heading into 6. But the most stringent lock downs were only into May for a lot of places; at least hear in San Antonio.
I don't understand this. Under what circumstances are you proposing that we'd be able to open back up? What's different now (or could have been) than it was when you claim we should be been locking down the first time? Certainly no amount of locking down would completely eradicate the virus, so what's the exit strategy?
I don't disagree with phased lockdown -> re-opening plans similar to what we did here in VA. The lockdown started in late March, round one of opening was rural areas and small gatherings, then extending to suburban areas, etc. And if numbers start to go back up, we might shut down again.
The problem I do have is a substantial number of people appear to be ignoring any/all orders to stay home, distance, etc. Everything from the speakeasy gyms mentioned in the article to churches holding indoor services to in-person classes at local schools. All three of which, by most accounts, are likely to result in new COVID clusters.
Whilst I am certain pool parties are indeed happening, something about the fact that they happened and ended up in international news strikes me of being a little, maybe, propaganda-ish.
What directions did they follow that allows Wuhan to have pool parties? I don't understand how having pool parties can be ok. Does the virus not exist there? How can that be possible?
Well luckily we have this thing called the internet that lets you see images, video, and text from far away places.
> What directions did they follow that allows Wuhan to have pool parties? I don't understand how having pool parties can be ok. Does the virus not exist there? How can that be possible?
Full lockdown, including stipends to help people out economically, heavy maks usage, massive amounts of tests (when they saw six new cases after not having any, they did 6.5M tests in a week in wuhan), and scanning temperatures of pretty much anyone anytime they go into public area.
The US had a concert with thousands of people just last week. I'm sure we can agree it shouldn't have, that it was a very dumb decision for Smash Mouth to do it - but I don't see much reason to believe that this Wuhan pool party was a smart decision.
There's a genuine culture difference in America, call it American Exceptionalism if you want, that's caused all sorts of normal preventative measures to be ignored or actively rejected. Many businesses actively rejected the idea of requiring masks, today some businesses still refuse service if you're wearing a mask. That's pretty ridiculous if you ask me.
Moreso in this thread you have hundreds of comments hemming and hawing, nitting and picking at every detail of proposed lockdowns and mask requirements. People hate this stuff and they call it an imposition on their freedom.
In other countries people just put on masks and stayed home. They didn't make nearly as much of a fuss about it all.
> They didn't make nearly as much of a fuss about it all.
Yes. But my point is, I don't see how that could make them any closer to re-opening. The virus still exists. All the factors in play when the lockdowns started are still in play.
The problem is the relaxed attitudes to COVID is causing clusters to appear and expand, delaying efforts to re-open.
Remember, lockdown isn't about 100% prevention, it's about keeping infections at a level that's acceptable (generally defined as keeping enough ICU beds and ventilators available for COVID+normal use).
If people all wear masks, keep distance when possible, and generally "follow the rules", we should be able to return to a more normal lifestyle.
But, as politicians force schools to open, pastors insist on in-person services, and the "mah rights!" crowd refuses to play by the rules at all, we get more COVID clusters than we might otherwise.
NYC was far from acceptable. The point was to prevent the rest of the nation getting to a similar point.
That levels in other urban areas generally stayed below thresholds is proof that the lockdowns worked.
Until the pandemic passes (either via mutation, vaccine, or herd immunity), we should be in a state of maintenance where we move in/out of various levels of lockdown/open to keep it that way.
I don't believe this for a second. The total number of people that managed to contract it in New Zealand within the last week was under 10, and they locked down an entire city because of it.
"Everyone stop moving around for a few days so we can contact trace and test these people without it spreading more" seems like a very good mitigation.
It has worked well for NZ thus far; they've been able to demask, hug, and live life pretty much normally for a while now.
I'd happily take the occasional few days hard lockdown in exchange for that.
You have to consider what would happen otherwise. If you lock down cities at 1000 infections then how many other cities manage to reach 1000 infections before you take action?
We live in an unprecedented age of communication and media. I have a hard time taking any so called 'extrovert' seriously when they say that they can't handle the current state of 'non-socializing.'
Maybe these extroverts aren't extroverts and instead they're regular people suffering from withdrawal because we live in an over-socialized society.
Let me preface:
I've abstained from going to the gym since we went into lockdown, and even now that we are out of it here. I am looking into equipment at home, and I can at least keep my fitness, if not my strength, by going mountain biking.
That said, there are many types of training you can't do without the right equipment, so it's at least a bit more than just wanting to be with others. Strength training/powerlifting/olympic lifting all come to mind. It's often really difficult to keep a rack, barbell and hundreds of kilos of weight at home, and obviously not something people had just lying around in case of an emergency.
There is certainly a social aspect to it as well, I love training with a couple of friends, the atmosphere can't be replicated at home. But like I said, I've abstained, and I would have been hopeful others would have to.
> That said, there are many types of training you can't do without the right equipment, so it's at least a bit more than just wanting to be with others. Strength training/powerlifting/olympic lifting all come to mind. It's often really difficult to keep a rack, barbell and hundreds of kilos of weight at home, and obviously not something people had just lying around in case of an emergency.
Yeah, this is pretty important. I used to lift and there's simply no way that I would make the investment to have all that equipment in my house. In normal times it's incredibly wasteful for each individual to stockpile their own redundant junk, rather than share a common pool with others. [0]
I switched to a more equipment-light calisthenics routine years ago with a few items I have around the house, so the current pandemic does not impact my own fitness routine - but for people looking to get really strong this is no substitute for lifting heavy.
[0] As an aside: this shouldn't only apply to gym equipment, communal resources should be way more common for economic and sustainability reasons. There's no reason at all every homeowner should have a lawnmower, for example.
> In normal times it's incredibly wasteful for each individual to stockpile their own redundant junk, rather than share a common pool with others
This has not been my experience at all. I used to have a membership to my local gym for my wife, myself, and their childcare program (basically watch your kids while you exercise for 1 hour).
I cancelled that membership and instead put that same amount of money into buying equipment at home (where I have enough space for it) and it only took me about 5-6 months to get enough equipment to replicate about 90% of my routine from the gym. Now I also don't have to wait in line or spend the time travelling to/from and I can exercise whenever I want. For me it has been way more effective.
And when I'm done using the equipment it's not going to go in the trash, I'll sell it in the local classifieds.
Wasteful on a societal level, not an individual level. If everyone did what you did, we'd all need more space, and a non-trivial amount of steel. Hard to do that if you live in a studio apartment, etc. You just can't apply your situation across the population.
Personally I can walk to my gym, and I get far greater quality and variety of equipment by not having to pay for, maintain and store it myself. There are no duplicate machines at my gym, yet it spans a whole warehouse, and I've used every machine at some point as my programme evolved.
As a renter, when I move I don't have to lug hundreds of kg of weights and equipment with me.
>Yeah, this is pretty important. I used to lift and there's simply no way that I would make the investment to have all that equipment in my house. In normal times it's incredibly wasteful for each individual to stockpile their own redundant junk, rather than share a common pool with others.
I don't see a problem with lawnmowers but I think maker spaces should be in every city. I can easily buy high quality tools for myself but I have no space in my apartment and once I'm done with a tool it feels like a waste to let it collect dust in a drawer.
There is one big problem with communal resources. Not everyone is qualified to use a tool and communal resources make it easier for unqualified people to get tools and break them.
Can't you do calisthenics ? There's a ton of possible exercise which uses only your body weight, or only minimal equipment like a pull-up bar. Can you do a one-legged squat? Pushup with a hand stand? Dragon flag? Many other exercises on youtube which make you sweat in minutes.
It really depends on your discipline. Powerlifting really starts at 100kg of weight on a barbell, and many need more than 200kg of weight on a bar to perform their training. You could keep healthy with a home fitness regime, but you'll lose some of your total strength, and you certainly won't be progressing.
That's all I'm trying to point out, for many disciplines there is no substitute for equipment. But so be it, these are unique times.
Body weight exercises can be great and useful in maintaining a certain level of fitness, but you're very limited in the ability to increase your muscle mass using them.
Kettlebells can get you a long way for sure, but are not really suitable for the bigger lifts from disciplines like powerlifting and olympic lifting. The biggest kettlebell I can find online is 92kg, even with one in each hand that's not enough for many. Part of the benefit of plates and barbells is you load them up 20/25kg at a timel, two 92kg kettle bells would be cumbersome to get into position!
That's true. But for parent's objective of keeping their fitness and hopefully their strength, a couple of kettlebells are probably better that mountain biking, and it takes far less equipment and space than a proper rack, bar and plates.
What specific long-term gain will we achieve with that short-term sacrifice? Sure we can keep most gyms closed for several more months, and that might marginally reduce the spread of the virus for a while. But the virus is now endemic and will be with us essentially forever. We have to reopen gyms eventually, and then we'll be right back where we started. As long as the curve has been flattened sufficiently and the healthcare system isn't overwhelmed then what are we really accomplishing by waiting?
I think you answered your own question: "As long as the curve has been flattened sufficiently and the healthcare system isn't overwhelmed"
The difference between "overwhelmed" and "not overwhelmed" is pretty subtle. You can measure this in ICU beds and hospital capacity, but that's not sustainable. You have to start asking "How many hours are health care workers working?". You also have to ask, if we did have any setbacks/outbreaks, what buffer do we have in terms of people and PPE availability?
You can't run the system at the red line, it's not sustainable. And any distance between our current capactity and that red line is somewhat open to interpretation, but I bet that distance feels a lot smaller for our EMTs and Doctors than it does for the average person on HN.
The healthcare system isn't running at the red line. Almost all hospitals have adequate capacity. Most healthcare providers are still working shorter than normal hours. So your concerns are unfounded.
And let's not forget all the people who decided to postpone care during COVID: most of them will have worsened conditions once they get to some hospital. The fearmongering may add a lot of avoidable deaths: cardiac problems not taking seriously, cancer found too late etc.
> What specific long-term gain will we achieve with that short-term sacrifice
It's a collective action problem. If everyone keeps to mask mandate and social distancing for a month, there is no need to close gyms and schools after. Germany and Italy are fine now with maybe ten deaths a day.
If 20% of the population keeps ignoring the recommendations because they don't give a flying fuck about the society they live in, R0 will stay above 1 forever and half of your neighbourhood will see their grandparents die in the next year.
Pandemic control measures can temporarily suppress R0, but as soon as those measures are lifted the contagion picks up again.
The average age of grandparents in the US is about 65. The actual infection fatality rate for that age group is 1.3%. That's bad, but nowhere near half the neighborhood.
How short term is short term? It's been six months with no end in sight. If you're a fitness enthusiast living in an apartment, you're screwed. All well and good if you've never had any interest in a gym, but if it's one of your primary hobbies to maintain mental health, then it's not a 'those people' thing. And again I speak as someone trying to replicate a gym in his apartment and getting exasperated.
People with houses and garages shouldn't be as critical, given their comparative privilege here.
Living in an apartment is what has fucked me over. I like living in a small space. But that was fine when everything I did was outside that space - Gym/Pool/Sports/Restaurants.
Swimming is my thing. I don't know why but it makes me feel normal like no other exercise can. but the pools have been closed for months now here in Melbourne (excluding a couple of weeks in the middle there).
Now I'm just depressed, stuck in isolation, borders are closed and can't visit my friends or family. Everyone saying this shit is easy for introverts have no idea. They seem to think introverts don't do anything or never used to leave their house?
Talking to a therapist maybe helps but as other people have said, not knowing if there is any end in sight is what sucks. Not sure why I'm venting to you.
I understand. I think you need to sub in other activities. This could be something like calisthenics if you want something more technical. There's a German online group called Calimove that have an "At home" workout and also some Calisthenics (starting from basics) levels workouts if you want that. There's some free Youtube stuff, and then there's some paid courses that give exact workouts. If something more basic is what you're after, biking or running.
It's a time of adaptation, and it sucks for sure but it's simply Necessary. If I told you what I'm doing instead of olympic weightlifting you would laugh. However it really helps reduce that exact angst you're describing (which I'm very familiar with as well). I consider physical exercise to be as critical to me as everything else, and absolutely essential for my mental health. I happen to be an introvert as well and feel similarly, btw.
> it is really strange that people feel they have to (...) get together (...)
> I find it amazing we can not see short term sacrifice for long term gain.
These are two related issues, but not the same.
Before we started (half) using the office again - I'd not see anyone outside of buying groceries. For approximately 3 months straight. It's not healthy, and I absolutely can see others having even more trouble with that than I did.
It is natural even introverts need to socialize.
That said, I'm surprised there seem to be less focus on organizing in smaller, regular groups. It's likely better for preventing spread if people met up in the same group of 5 to 10 people, rather than gathering indoors - especially as it now seems quite likely covid-19 is airborne.
So yes, some personal sacrifice should be expected - but I would be careful dismissing the need for people to see other people, in person.
I am one of those people that goes to a small gym near my apartment daily, even in the current times. The gym isn't very full, maybe a total of 4-5 people when I'm there (I picked my time based on how full it is). Everyone is obligated to wear a mask, there are disinfection sprays and one-time-use wipes that we have to use after finishing with a machine. Some people are also disinfecting equipment before they use it. The gym has the windows open and added disinfection diffuser thingies into each corner.
The reason for why I take the risk and keep go is pretty simple: Mental health.
When we had a lockdown, gyms closed and I was confined to my apartment 24/7 I felt horrible. Days just blurred into each other, I gained weight, my motivation to do anything dropped. My life was just work and I hated it.
Of course I bought a set of dumbbells (which were also ridiculously expensive because everyone had the same idea) and tried running but that only gets you so far. I can't get more equipment at home because my apartment is like 35sqm
When the gyms reopned I started going again and kept my guard up: Disinfect everything, don't be near other people, be careful when I take my mask off, wash my hands before I touch anything after I finish. Since then I started feeling much better. Even if I don't do anything else like meeting friends, going out for drinks, or if my workday happened to be shitty, I have something that makes me think more about myself and my health. Sports has incredible benefits on mood, sleep and mental health, hence why I take the risk.
For all we know, this pandemic can continue for a very long time. I'm not saying we should all forget the virus and do what we did before, but we should still try to find a somewhat healthy day-cycle that doesn't knock us in lockdown depression. Going to a small, empty gym while keeping my guard up is my calculated risk of "with corona".
The group thing is real. Some people just really need the motivation from others being present or their perceived judgement to show up regularly. It's not a failing on their part, whatever gets you to the gym and keeps you going, but maybe work on your individual workouts during the pandemic?
They work out in groups because they congregate in places with pull-up bars, bumper plates, barbells, medicine balls and so forth. Otherwise only those with houses and garages get to work out.
Not justifying it, I'm just jealous because my bedroom has turned into a gym and it sucks.
> Adding to the post, I read it earlier... it is really strange that people feel they have to go work out in groups. Or get together, or go to bars. I find it amazing we can not see short term sacrifice for long term gain.
When problems are on this massive of a scale it is easy for individuals to think "cannot be me". Reality is that it is all of us.
> I find it amazing we can not see short term sacrifice for long term gain.
That seems to be a very widespread societal issue. Feedback and gratification are very effective conditioning loops and it applies to basically everything directly socially linked. Advertising, education, law enforcement. Everything which shapes anothe life whether done knowing or unknowingly and can come to bite the conditioner one way or another. Like the "tiger mom nightmare" case of forcing a son through med school only for him to show it to his mom say "There I am done it, happy now?" and working in a convenience store because of the sheer weight of negative conditioned meant that poverty was preferrable to six figure income and working days calling back decades of resentment.
Defying it successfully is a way to make or save money and everyone hates it essentially is rare and doing so is an outright resentment magnet. The majority will dislike anyone who points it out as a potential component to a solution. It gets one outright dehumanized even for optimizations innocous as meal prepping the same balanced and cheap meal daily to save up for something.
the patrons apparently don't believe that their behavior is unethical, and in fact, think that the dictates of their rules are unethical, and potentially illegal too.
I think few are willing to sustain a COVID-free lifestyle indefinitely. Using induction some people probably conclude that they might as well not bother.
I see the reasoning and don’t think the ethics of our pandemic behaviors have been fully discussed.
If this was true, we'd see landlords with paid-off mortgages waiving the rent. Since we don't see this on any major scale, we can only conclude that mortgages are inconsequential to landlords demanding rent-payments.
A mortgage is not the only cost of owning a property. Taxes are a third of my mortgage payment every month. Other than the IRS delaying tax day by 3 months, I haven't seen any delay or waivers of taxes due.
In addition, there's basic upkeep and maintenance that you're required to perform to keep a building insured, let alone to make it re-openable at some point.
Depending on the state, calling sufficiently-far up the chain of command may do something.
The officer's immediate superior may be inclined to cut the officer some slack, but the buck stops with the person charged with ensuring that the pandemic is effectively managed.
The buck stops with all of us. We either beat this thing together or it keeps killing our relatives. Those are the only options. Pick one.
The problem is, of course, that those same people in the gym—an environment which is naturally quite conducive to spreading infections—later go to their workplace, or their doctor, or their public transport, or a bar, and back to the gym. By doing that, they can carry an infection around to others, even if they aren’t themselves symptomatic.
This contributes to the general public health problem, increasing the infection rate among the population and meaning more people get sick or die. This applies whether they were in the gym, or just had the misfortune of interacting with someone who had been.
I don’t know who initially said it, but… I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care about other people.
Nobody particularly cares about people doing high-contagion activities like going to a gym, for the people in the gym themselves, the ethical problem is that they're very few degrees of separation away from people who can't afford to be exposed. Even if you drive by and mind your own business, that gym almost certainly has a blast radius of unnecessary infections and deaths.
nah, shut you down with the health board for putting everyone's lives at risk. there's no live and let live here. if folks just sit back and do nothing, people will die.
> Proper authorities, photo of car, and a set of local news organisations, plus a few tweets and your state reps, might get some attention.
> Play interests off each other.
What would you tell the authorities? That there are people in a gym and that they need to be arrested? What outcome would you hope to achieve by tattling on them?
Unlike actual prohibition, the social agreement behind "lockdowns" is subject to time contingencies. The activities considered "essential" grow as time passes. While there are nominal categories of "essential" defined by community/political leaders, that contract depends on agreement. Since each person's conception of "essential" is different, as time passes "essential" grows exponentially instead of linearly.
An extension of this is the notion of emergency authorities and people’s perception of the weight they carry.
An emergency is an emergent situation, which must be new, evolving, and carry the risk of serious harm. Emergency orders are based upon the idea that executive authority must be wielded to quickly mitigate an emergency situation. But a key attribute of an emergency (by definition) is “new” - if emergency powers are extended month after month then they are based on a situation that is no longer an emergency.
Now before you get angry, consider that we can agree that COVID-19 is a serious threat that requires government action _without_ it necessarily being an emergency or emergent situation. The threat has long since emerged.
Now we have a lot of governors issuing decrees based on emergency authorities that they’ve been using for six months. This is quite simply a conflict with our basic notion of democracy. We do not have rulers, yet our governors are issuing rules purportedly carrying the weight of law with no oversight from legislature.
Whether or not you agree with the orders, I think it’s intuitively likely that you can see how this is essentially a disruption in the relationship between people and their government, and as such it’s at least understandable how many people would feel these orders carry no moral weight (even if they’re not thinking from a legal perspective). And so the existence of gray market gyms and parties is at least understandable, even if we don’t condone such behavior.
> Now we have a lot of governors issuing decrees based on emergency authorities that they’ve been using for six months. This is quite simply a conflict with our basic notion of democracy. We do not have rulers, yet our governors are issuing rules purportedly carrying the weight of law with no oversight from legislature.
That was my biggest issue with the whole situation in the USA. All of these emergency measures were done without any mention of timelines, all the while a vocal part of the population was saying "fuck your freedoms", and "millions of people will die if they lift the lockdown". It's like everyone forgot about the Patriot Act overnight, and doesn't realize that the government doesn't like giving up control after whatever "emergency" situation happens. Something needed to be done, but this whole situation made me lose a lot of faith in the government and my fellow Americans.
> doesn't like giving up control after whatever "emergency" situation happens
I genuinely don't understand this fear re: COVID.
Why would governors want keep gyms and restaurants closed post-COVID? What do mayors gain by forcing people to wear masks post-COVID? It's in the government's interest, as an institution, to open things up ASAP. They're hemorrhaging money.
The things I'd actually worry about -- using COVID to justify suppressing protests and speech, for example -- aren't happening even now.
The only way this theory makes even the remotest bit of sense is if elected officials are malevolent villains hell-bent on literally any arbitrary form of control even in cases where it undermines their own self-interest and happiness. Believe it or not, governors and mayors enjoy eating out, some go to the gym, and no one enjoys wearing masks.
I do believe there's a very real danger of emergency powers being extended indefinitely in general. But not in the case of health orders related to COVID. Because the powers being exercised aren't the sort of things even the most power-hungry person would want to enforce indefinitely. There's just no motivation to do so. And, for anyone not experiencing a literal and extreme psychotic break, lots of even completely self-interested incentives to get things back to normal.
> It's in the government's interest, as an institution, to open things up ASAP.
Theories by which it is in a government's interest to delay reopening longer than optimal:
1. The Governor's political interests lie in "doing something," to contrast with "do nothing" political approaches. Ceasing to "do something" erases this advantage.
2. Masks and closure become a political symbol to certain classes -- almost a political advertisement -- and those classes tend to see the burdens as insignificant and a "community responsibility." Efforts to reopen, then, are seen as opposed to the good of the community.
3. Industries and activities that support the Governor will increase COVID cases, so the Governor decides other industries and activities are "nonessential," shifting costs from supporters to non-supporters.
4. The Governor is politically or legally risk averse, and defers to the most conservative health authorities to avoid responsibility for outcomes.
5. The Governor underweights economic impacts, because it believes the Federal Government should use tax policy or welfare to socialize the economic costs of the "required" costs.
Granted, these aren't fears the government will remain irrational forever, just that it will stay irrational longer than people can stay liquid.
I do think some people will swap roles after the US election, and they will rediscover a patriotic duty to muddle through, as our elected officials do the best they can.
> I genuinely don't understand this fear re: COVID.
> Why would governors want keep gyms and restaurants closed post-COVID?
I think your lack of understanding is because you frame the question as nuanced to keeping two types of establishments closed. Instead ask questions like: Why would governors want to keep overriding city-level authority? Why would governors want to maintain control over federal funds and subsidies related to health crises? Why would governors want to be able to selectively close certain types of businesses (e.g. close bars, allow restaurants, differentiate between the two based on arbitrary number, disallow one to become the other)? Why would governors want to disallow certain medical procedures (e.g. abortion)?
I can go on and on. The general question is whether executive power at any government level begets more executive power, and the answer is almost always "yes".
The way I see it, the issue is that the “as soon as possible” is being interpreted to mean “the time at which there is no risk to my political career,” not merely when it is prudent to reopen.
> the time at which there is no risk to my political career
Do you live in the US? The situation is exactly the opposite here.
Downplaying the significance of COVID is practically part of the GOP platform at this point. It's gotten to the point in the last 2 months where even extremely mild and all-volunteer public health measures are political suicide in the majority of US states.
But also, even in the small number of very left-leaning areas like mid-sized/large cities, mayors and governors are under intense pressure to get things back to normal.
Hell. Even universities, which take tons of heat for being hotbeds of leftism even relative to left-leaning cities, are pushing forward with campus openings despite contrary advice from public health experts.
As far as I can tell, being too prudent for too long would be an enormous political liability in literally every US jurisdiction. In fact, being prudent at all is a political liability in >25 states even with new cases hitting highs. Here in rural PA I get harassed for wearing a mask into the grocery store.
The "permanent COVID emergency" concern is ridiculously disconnected from political reality in the USA. So much so that it's more of an unhinged conspiracy theory than a legitimate concern.
> Do you live in the US? The situation is exactly the opposite here.
I do. I live in the Bay Area. Your local situation may be different.
I stand by what I said. I’m surprised to hear some think there will be a permanent COVID emergency. I’m not really doing the whole partisan thing, so I don’t know the state of that debate.
We are in a pandemic; of course there will be pressure on our leaders. My conjecture is that career concerns may be leading some to ignore principles of good governance to minimize the risk that things will turn out poorly for them. I think it is not uncommon for political leaders who call all the shots to back themselves into such a situation. We need a way out.
You don't know the state of the debate on one of the most important issues of our time, but you felt the need to weigh in with your conjecture anyway? I'm not sure what exactly you think you are bringing to this conversation. Aristotle was a really smart guy, but he would have saved the world almost two thousand years of being completely wrong about physics if he had bothered to check how things actually worked instead of reasoning about it from first principles and assuming that his best guess was good enough.
Talking about hypothetical pressures that a theoretical government might face is a lot less interesting when we can look outside and see that the exact opposite of your hypothetical is actually taking place. Empirically, the pressure to not bankrupt the government and have to lay off police, firefighters, and teachers, to let people go back to their lives, and to not be seen as job-hating nanny-state bureaucrats is the dominant force in state and local decision-making, only barely being held in check by a sense of civic duty and concern for long-term consequences. And in places where civic duty and long-term planning aren't in vogue, we see that the former has won out entirely. Mayor Breed and Governor Newsom are doing what they do despite the political consequences of shelter-in-place, not because of them.
I was referring to the partisan mudslinging, the conspiracy theories, and so on. I do not keep up with that.
I am active in our local community and contributing my own interpretation.
Edit: and if you are implying that Newsom and Breed and others are holding the line because they know in their hearts to do the right thing, well, this pandemic proves nearly every politician on the planet must have a really big heart.
I apologize for my tone in my last comment. I realize now that it was unnecessarily harsh.
I don't agree though that it's out of a sense of charity or morality. I think it's a matter of self preservation, just acting on a longer timescale than others. Politicians don't want to live in a blasted hellscape any more than the rest of us. And I think a fair number have realized that taking unpopular actions now is the only way to avoid that.
> But also, even in very left-leaning areas like mid-sized/large cities, mayors and governors are under intense pressure to get things back to normal.
The refusal of the GOP (Senate, mostly, though the White House seems to be on the same page and perhaps the main motivator) to provide state/local aid, given that there are legal, practical, and other restrictions limiting state borrowing for emergency costs, especially non-capital costs, and structurally they have since not long after the founding relies on the federal government to backstop them for that is a big part of this.
The problem is, what's post-COVID? The virus won't be eradicated any time soon, even after a vaccine arrives; most experts predict a timeline of decades to never. I doubt many mayors are supervillains who want to keep people miserable just for the sake of it - but I worry that quite a few might feel like they have to as long as cases are being detected. (Why do we still have strict TSA restrictions, even though everyone agrees they make flying miserable and everyone knows they're unreliable at actually detecting dangerous objects in luggage?)
Long-term, what you might expect to see are structuraal changes rather than prohibitions.
Disease transmission is a communications and network problem -- there are the unobserved opportunities for infection, the known observed cases, the transmission rates, incubation and course-of-illness periods, acquired immunity, mortality, morbidity.
In periods of outbreak you need hightened disease surveillance, increased blocking of transmission, and reduced opportunities for infection. Barriers, reduced crowds, improved sterilisation and surface cleaning, fewer shared-touch interfaces (from touchscreens to bannisters), and the like.
These will likely be instituted through building and health codes, not so much activity restrictions. Some high-contact activities (bars, nightclubs, theatres, amusement parks) may well be subject to temporary closures. But expect these to be contingent on infection levels.
Do expect to see massive changes in office/work, retail, and transport designs, hoever. Possibly travel and quarantine restrictions.
> I doubt many mayors are supervillains who want to keep people miserable just for the sake of it - but I worry that quite a few might feel like they have to as long as cases are being detected.
Why would they have to? It certainly wouldn't be in their electoral self-interest.
The concern is that we might end up in a state where COVID restrictions are considered so obvious that they're not even a matter of electoral self-interest; where abolishing COVID restrictions sounds as extreme as abolishing taxes or abolishing the military. Many people say they don't want the restrictions gone until COVID is eradicated, and I believe they're telling the truth.
Solutions are found already. They must be scaled out to whole world: vaccine, contact tracing, masks in public buildings and public transport in case of outbreak, air and surface disinfection at constant rate, vitamin supplements, etc.
> Why would governors want keep gyms and restaurants closed post-COVID?
A completely corrupt mayor could use this newfound power to solicit some political donations. There are plenty other possibilities, like the need to be seen responding to the crisis or "tough on the virus".
I have never understood the demand for timelines. Pandemics do not care about calendars, and expecting our response to a pandemic to have an expiration date struck me as both folly and hubris of a lethal variety.
Now if we expected our government to set conditions of the lock down ending, that would be better. Something based around the pandemic itself, such as new infections per day and test positivity would probably be best. But time? That’s not how this works.
>I have never understood the demand for timelines. Pandemics do not care about calendars, and expecting our response to a pandemic to have an expiration date struck me as both folly and hubris of a lethal variety.
I'm sure the legislature will have no problem forgoing a game of golf with lobbyists in order to vote to extend a bill that gives government more power. They have no problem doing that every time the Patriot Act comes back up.
There's no good reason emergency measures can't have sunset clauses.
Pray tell, what powerful special interests have long-term incentives to force people to wear masks and stay out of restaurants? Like, are you actually suggesting that Big Mask and Big Pre-Cooked Meal Co. are going to take mayors or lawmakers golfing? I genuinely don't understand this theory.
I don't think you interpreted my comment correctly. I was insulting the legislature by pointing out that they have no problem showing up and voting to curtail people's freedoms for nefarious reasons without a pandemic so there's no good reason they can't vote every few months on whether or not to continue to curtail people's freedoms to mitigate a pandemic.
I see. That's not at all what I thought your comment was saying.
Well, in a lot of states the legislature can do that today if they want. It's completely within state legislature's capacity to force action from municipalities, either directly or through the purse strings.
Most don't want to because they're publicly supportive of shutdowns. Or because they're publicly courting anti-maskers but privately know shutdowns are necessary and therefore don't want to take responsibility.
You’re confusing a constraint of the granted power (time-duration for an emergency action within the social contract) and the constraint of the situation (time-duration of the virus).
No one is arguing whether the virus is on our clock. The argument is whether we’ve granted our governments the right to indefinitely extend their emergency authorizations.
No, I am not confusing the two. I am in fact arguing that limiting the governments powers to fight the pandemic based on time is bad, because it ties our ability to fight the pandemic to a metric that is completely unrelated to successfully fighting the pandemic.
By speaking in terms of "time-duration for an emergency action within the social contract" compared to "time-duration of the virus" dfee means: You need powers that bypass democratically elected representatives in week 1 of an emergency - but when you get to week 10, there's been plenty of time to get a urgent bill passed by the legislature, so shouldn't the emergency powers have been replaced by an explicit bill?
And if such a bill can't be passed - i.e. the person holding emergency powers is using them to do things our elected representatives aren't willing to sign off on - surely that proves how important it is that the powers be limited.
(Of course, if you believe our elected representatives would risk killing people to make the other side look bad, or would stuff unrelated pork into the must-pass bill, you might not follow this line of reasoning)
That's why you leave it up to duly elected legislatures to decide whether or not to extend the shutdowns created in response to the initial emergency. The legislature could create a reopening plan with specific metrics to follow to determine when that should happen. But the emergency powers that continue to be wielded by executives are an usurpation of democratic rule. The legislatures can and should have formulated a proper reopening plan by May at the latest, and they could have continued to modify it as more information became available.
“After X days responsibility should transfer from the executive branch to the legislative” is completely different from “the governments ability to take X measures to stop a pandemic should be limited to Y days”. I am only responding to the latter.
My fear about the former is the implicit assumption that the legislature won’t also close gyms, bars, and other businesses that a vocal minority want re opened immediately.
>My fear about the former is the implicit assumption that the legislature won’t also close gyms, bars, and other businesses that a vocal minority want re opened immediately.
That's the risk and price of democracy and freedom, the people (or their representatives) aren't supposed to do what's best, they're supposed to do what the public wants
First of all, we’re a representative democracy. We do not elect people to implement our exact will, we elect people who we expect to use their best judgement to use the powers vested in them. If the expectation was that elected members do exactly what their constituents wanted, we would be a direct democracy instead.
Second, I find the notion that “the price of freedom is the risk of just not bothering to solve a pandemic” to be a serious insult to democracy. I question the legitimacy of any democratic system that would just ... not bother to protect citizens.
And finally, calls to return to normal represent a narrow minority of the population. In fact a majority of Americans are worried about the virus, a majority wants schools to remain closed, and a majority think we opened back up too soon. If we’re talking about “popular will”, then we would be talking about extending shut downs, not ending them.
>And finally, calls to return to normal represent a narrow minority of the population. In fact a majority of Americans are worried about the virus, a majority wants schools to remain closed, and a majority think we opened back up too soon. If we’re talking about “popular will”, then we would be talking about extending shut downs, not ending them.
Its interesting because Gallup has shown remarkable consistency in people self isolating. The percentage of the population visiting restaurants, bars, and their friends homes remains down in the mid 20s. Only 34% of Americans have returned to the office, only 5-6% of Americans are going to their place of worship. 5% of Americans have returned to a gym.
People are by and large self enforcing the lock down. According to Gallup the percentage of Americans who would return to normal “right now” is 28%. The vast majority of Americans want at least to see case numbers fall first, with sizable groups expecting no new cases in their state (28%) or a vaccine (23%) before returning to normal. 67% of Americans say they will enforce social distancing “for as long as necessary” before their mental health begins to suffer, up 13% since April.
The groups shouting about ending the lock down and returning to normal are about 28-30% of the population, according to Gallup.
Executives are also elected, and most states (all?) have provisions for extraordinary measures in extraordinary situations. Legislatures are able to override them given sufficient super-majorities. Courts prevent executives from overstepping their authority.
I'll answer the question for my state of Michigan, which is one with a governor facing partisan backlash over her decisions:
> - Do the "extraordinary measures" have to be proven effective?
That's how it's been handled here. We went through a phase of virtually absolute lockdown this spring, loosened restrictions this summer, and locked a few things back down again (bars were especially bad). The governor also ramped up mask mandates as we learned more about their effectiveness.
> Do the "extraordinary measures" have to be proven effective than doing nothing?
Not sure exactly what you mean here, but the regions that have done nothing have seen worse results.
> Has anyone announced what metrics we're even tracking to determine "effective"?
Number of confirmed cases, number of tests administered, percentage of tests being positive, number of deaths. The last metric is the one we really care about the most, but we can mitigate it by tracking leading indicators. Nothing more than statistical theory at play here.
> How long does something have to persist until it's no longer an "extraordinary situation"?
> Are the "extraordinary measures" persistent or limited by time, risk, etc?
>have provisions for extraordinary measures in extraordinary situations.
And the legal justification by which those measures apply to a situation that is going on half a year is dubious at best. The legality of those measures themselves is also generally dubious from a constitutional law perspective. Most of them have never been meaningfully challenged because they've mostly been used for short term emergencies at this point. The legislatures need to nut up and to their damn jobs. They've had nearly 6mo at this point.
And do what exactly after they "nut up"? Lockdowns and closures to contain the spread of the Covid-19 remain overwhelmingly popular in most areas, and are saving lives.
Pass bills that says "yo, the governor is actually allowed to do <the current things they're doing> in response to a pandemic" with the usual legal stuff that is used to restrict it to the present situation. I know that doesn't solve the constitutional law aspect but frankly it won't matter for reasons of how the courts work.
Timelines can have milestones instead of dates, as you say. It's still a "timeline" because it's a sequence of events ordered by (indeterminate amounts of) time.
Is that actually true? My state has well defined phases of reopening based on infection rates, and I searched for a handful of random states across the political spectrum and found similar plans in place.
I don't really buy the power grab angle here. Most of the flack the federal government got was for explicitly _not_ doing any country-wide coordination or restriction. "Leave it to the governors". And it's hard not to find the "assault on freedom" angle disingenuous when it comes primarily from the socially conservative parts of the country that have historically worked to constrain individual rights.
On of the problems with the lockdown orders was that to a large extent they were arbitrary with respect to what was essential and open ended with respect to time. Such a prohibition could be effective if the public trusted the people or process which led to the lock downs, but the people showed themselves scarcely worthy of our trust and there really was no process.
"We believe in science" is a fine mantra, though it doesn't directly lead to "liquor stores are essential". Our political elites were unable to resist politicizing every decision, gloating over others' misery and/or misrepresenting outcomes for political gain.
So, yeah, basically now it seems like many people are deciding for themselves.
I think some of the "essential" businesses were more essential to people maintaining their sanity than essential for people to survive. It was a "bread and circuses" play. Liquor stores and dispensaries are on that list; if you're going to lock everyone down for an extended period of time, they're going to get bored. Bored people get unhappy, and unrest increases. Letting people have their booze and weed increases the amount of time they can cope with the cabin fever (although there are certainly downsides).
There is also the sense of an ongoing crises, in the sense of a threat in which there is a very real likelihood of either a very bad, or very positive outcome. The Covid situation strongly resembles this.
Too there is the situation that even after the immediate onset of some emergency has passed, dealing with consequential effects carries great significance. To call on one of my preferred nonmedical disaster scenarios, in the 1975 Banqiao Dam failure (China), 170,000 people ultimately lost their lives. "Only" 25,000 or so drowned in the initial deluge. Over 150,000 perished due to an inadequate, ineffective, or incompetent rescue, recovery, and relief operation, due to starvation and disease.
Historical epidemics, even within the past century and certainly prior to it, have lasted years to decades. Come to think of it, the HIV/AIDS, TB (including TDR variants), MRSA, and hepatitis outbreaks also match this description.
The notion that six months is an excessively long response window fails any experiential comparison. It does howevee reflect failures of education, communication, leadership, and comprehension.
Ongoing crises are not emergencies. If it lasts for long enough, it becomes normal, and must be dealt with by your normal planning. If your planning can't deal with it, it must be adapted, there is no reason to keep creating exceptional actions for something that is there every day.
That said, it's perfectly reasonable for a government to keep exceptional procedures for an year. That's the minimum planning granularity they use. The GP's 6 months limit does not seem reasonable.
> What happens where a long-term crisis endures requiring rapid decisionmaking, faster than legislative deliberative practice allows?
The point is that that's impossible. If the crisis is ongoing for months then there is ipso facto enough time for the normal legislative process to apply. Applying some emergency decisionmaking process that bypasses the normal checks and balance is only justifiable for novel events.
What you're not considering is that it's possible both for a situation to be enduring and critical.
In a pandemic, lockdown, or quarantine, really is the only effective tool of control without immunity-bosting therapy (vaccination), or possibly, effective treatment (antiviral therapy). Not having people get sick in the first place is your best option, and, due to exponential growth, the faster you respond to outbreaks or rising Rt, the better.
Add to this delays in disease surveillance --- by the time you start seeing cases and they are reported, you're already 1-2 weeks behing the curve, and for COVID-19 that means two orders of magnitude more spread than you've detected, there simply is not time to convene a legislature, undergo debate, deflect disinformation, misinformation, and faulty models, to legislatively reimpose tighter movement controls.
We're seeing this in China, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, Italy, Germany, Spain, and in numerous other countries and US states as the pandemic is brought under control, controls loosened, rates start rising, and controls are reimposed immediately as the resurgence is apparent. And by doing so, several of these countries (Taiwan, NZ, AU, South Korea) have avoided mass outbreaks, others have limited those to specific locations (China) or brought generalised outbreaks under control (Italy, Spain, Germany). Ongoing vigilance and vigorous response remain necessary, shown by experience.
By direct analogy, an ongoing siege remains an emergency though it continues for months or years. Ask the citizens of Leningrad. And this virus is a siege, it remains outside the gates.
An executive acts, a legislation deliberates.
Both are parts of the government. Systems vary, but in most democratic states, both are ether directly (presidential model) or indirectly (prime minister) the peoples' representatives. The power is not absolute, and legislators act as a check on the executive, increasing or decreasing powers, perhaps removing from office if fully incompetent or abusive.
Again:
- Previous pandemics have lasted years, decades, and centuries. Your imposed timeframe is utterly divorced from reality.
- The principle mechanism for pandemic control is vector and transmission reduction. Reduce numbers and rates of contacts, likelihood of exposure, amount of contagious agent shared, viability of that agent: Stay home, wash your hands, wear masks. It's not high-tech or sexy. It is effective.
- Rapid and effective executive decisionmaking is required for response, there is no time for parliamentary delay.
- In democratic states the executive remains a representative of the people.
- Powers granted are neither absolute nor without check.
- Such governance and response is proved effective in numerous regions.
- Emergence refers not merely to the initial appearance of the threat but to the situation as a whole. If it has rapidly-emergent characteristics and properties, it is an emergency.
"A condition of urgent need for action or assistance: a state of emergency." (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/emergency)
But the case that all issues must be resolved in a single prime-time commercial broadcast segment, or a few scant months, is parlous poor made here.
And for the record, I've made similar arguments since the beginning of this crisis:
The first time you have to impose a lockdown it's an emergency. Maybe the second time too. But once it becomes something you're doing regularly, it's something you should have a process in place for, and there should be legislative oversight of that process.
The executive has emergency powers to respond to novel developments - and that would include unexpected outbreaks or anything that demanded a radical change in our thinking. But at this point the existence of a pandemic is not an emergency. We know it's there, there's enough time to consult experts and debate appropriate responses.
We managed to have legislative oversight when conducting wars. The president is allowed to unilaterally authorise military action for 90 days, but past that point Congress has to approve it. Surely we can manage the same thing for a disease.
If not now, then when? Seriously, this could go on for years; at what point is this just the "new normal"? Before the pandemic people were talking (with good reason) about a "climate emergency"; should that give the executive grounds to make arbitrary decrees for an unbounded time?
I don't doubt that these governors have the right intentions and are doing what they think is best. But our processes and safeguards are there for good reason, and it's not just about protecting us from moustache-twirling villains. When the stakes are high it becomes even more important to have debate, oversight, and review.
Covid strikes me as a unique situation that doesn't come up that often. It is a longer term threat than most "emergencies", but still fundamentally a temporary concern. One way or another, it will be resolved within a few years (hopefully sooner); and the facts on the ground still change relatively quickly.
It may last for a longer term than most emergencies; but still operates on a smaller timeline than legislatures are used to operating. The only analogous situation I can think of is wars, and those are already given special treatment (and have seen a steady growth in executive authority over the past decades).
Additionally, I am not aware of any executive (within the US) that has suspended or directly contradicted the legislative branch. If your issue is that the situation has gone on for too long to be dealt with using emergency authority, then your complaint is with the legislatures that have failed to either issue the rules themselves, or override the executive orders.
I could see an arguement for updating the various authorizations for executive orders to allow them to be repealed by a simple majority vote not subject to veto; or even by a minority vote. However, as far as I am aware, there has not been a major conflict at the state level where these powers would be relevant.
They're doing that in Minnesota too. But that's it. Just removing the emergency declaration. No other solutions to what to do are being proposed, just removing the declaration.
Covid strikes me as a unique situation that doesn't come up that often. It is a longer term threat than most "emergencies", but still fundamentally a temporary concern.
Right now it's unclear if COVID-19 will behave like the 1918-19 Spanish flu and disappear after Winter 2021 because most everyone subceptible will have gotten it, or of it will be more like Picardy Fever, which hung around for two centuries.
> "...the existence of gray market gyms and parties is at least understandable..."
much of what you say is reasonable, but those two examples are actually quite different, and it's important to be careful with generalized pronouncements because of those important differences.
folks going to a gym can still distance properly, and so can still reasonably curtail transmission. the primary purpose of the gym is a personal workout, not sharing indoor airspace with others for prolonged amounts of time with abandon.
most (large) parties on the other hand are willfully defiant and reckless, with no intention of containing transmission.
gyms are fine, small get-togethers are likely fine, all-night ragers are overwhelmingly unlikely to be fine.
State legislatures can probably pull back these authorities if they want. The emergency measures by governors are usually based on provisions of state law, and can be revoked by law.
Michigan has a procedure that may let the legislature do exactly this without even worrying about a veto:
> But a key attribute of an emergency (by definition) is “new”
I think perhaps a better attribute for what you are going for is temporary, and temporary is relative. The changes due to the emergency of COVID-19 are temporary, but longer lasting that some other emergencies, like a fire for example. Although I've now gotten used to fire emergencies lasting weeks, which is entirely new as of the last few years.
Since each person's conception of "essential" is different
There was someone on WGN-TV a few weeks ago lamenting that it was insulting for all of the hairdressers and manicurists and yoga instructors to be called "non-essential."
I thought it was more insulting for that person to value the work of hairdressers and manicurists and yoga instructors on an equal basis with firefighters, doctors, paramedics, and actual real "essential" workers.
Nobody calls a holistic lifestyle consultant to run into a burning building to save a baby.
An irony of the "lockdown" is that all the activities that aren't "essential" are the reasons people have to live. "Essential" covers most of the basics in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In the absence of Maxlow's top line items, why bother with the "essentials?"
There could be a couple different usages of "essential" in this case. There is the services that are needed to keep people alive, then there are services needed to keep people healthy (including mental health), and finally services needed because taking them away would induce a large amount of non-compliance with the public.
Then there is the twisting of "essential" -- the home center needs to say open because if a pipe busts in your house you need to get replacement parts to fix it. But most people go to the home center to pick up materials for home projects that they can now do because they suddenly have a large amount of at-home time on their hands.
This gets tricky. Of course we know that when there's a fire, a firefighter is often imminently essential. But it's trickier to imagine a society where all "non-essential" jobs are banned indefinitely. You wouldn't die in a matter of minutes like in the fire example, but you'd also probably find such a society unrecognizable to the extent that you might reconsider what types of jobs are and aren't "essential." There'd be a lot of poverty, a lot of hunger, and yes, it would cause a lot of people to die.
That's a reasonable definition of "essential", but at least in the US the term isn't used this way. Takeout restaurants, Starbucks, etc. have always remained open as "essential businesses".
The wording was problematic from the start. It probably would have been better to classify businesses into "risky" and "not-risky" or some sliding scale of risk, rather than using the "essential" label that comes with moral baggage. Close or restrict risky businesses (indoor, large crowds, etc.), keep open not-risky ones.
I'm pretty sure that, much like with Prohibition, the moral baggage is the entire point. The idea is that for this disease - and only this disease - we have the absolute moral obligation to minimize the number of deaths no matter what, and that anyone who suggests there are tradeoffs is a monster who literally wants to sacrifice people.
It made more sense at the very start, when many people expected that we'd spend 2-4 weeks doing only "essential" things and then we'd return to mostly normal life. But yeah, it became clear pretty quickly that wasn't the trajectory, and the required messaging shift never ended up happening.
Those people were under informed. Everybody "in the know" knew mid-March, before the lockdowns, that health officials wanted AT LEAST 8 weeks of shutdown to be able to have an impact and measure it.
in the US the term isn't used this way. Takeout restaurants, Starbucks, etc. have always remained open as "essential businesses".
Not where I live. All restaurants were shut down, even for take-out. They were only allowed to offer take-out food when restrictions started being lifted.
Just curious, which state is this? (you don't have to respond if you don't want to -- I don't want to violate your privacy, I just want to know)
It just seems to me shutting down takeout makes it harder to enforce a lockdown. It assumes everyone is able to cook, which doesn't seem like a reasonable assumption.
Yep. Dairy Queen, for instance, had lines of cars wrapping around the building and lining up in the street during the height of our "lockdown". Tons of things were still open in-person, too, like grocery stores, and there was no mask order and maybe 1/4 of people were wearing masks, at best, and almost no employees anywhere. Only exception is that a couple weeks in (IIRC) Costco started requiring them. We didn't get a mask order until a couple weeks after we ended our joke of a "lockdown". The police don't follow the order (sigh) but almost everyone else is, at least. But now everything's back open, more-or-less entirely.
It's no wonder we're still muddling along with this problem, months into it.
Both firefighters and doctors are a relatively recent “invention”, I’d say 100-150 years old (with the medical profession being re-invented after a first stint back in Antiquity). As such there’s nothing “essential” about them, you could say that bakers, fishermen or even sex-workers are more essential than doctors and fire-fighters.
It's a pretty twisted definition of "essential" to include only the things that are definitely going to kill you if you go without and not to include the things that just might kill you.
I was only saying that we managed just well enough without firefighters and medics for thousands of years, had they been really “essential” we would have kept/invented those trades well before we actually did. Were you to have asked my peasant grandmother what she reguarded as more essential between a doctor and a priest she would have totally chosen the priest, reason being that she knew she was going to die anyway (we all will) but the priest was one of the only persons who could take care of her soul.
Again, doctors and firefighters might look “essential” for a secular and technological society like ours (one where we’re afraid of death and where we value physical stuff that could burn) but that hasn’t always been the case. It still isn’t in many parts of the world.
> ad they been really “essential” we would have kept/invented those trades well before we actually did
Unless things change over time, as such requiring new facilities. We didn't have nuclear power station inspectors (or regulations) thousands of years ago, so are they also non-essential?
> It still isn’t in many parts of the world
There are "many" places in the world were death is not feared and people are happy to see their stuff burn? Barring nomadic jungle tribes with no persistent possessions or home locations in the first place, which societies are you describing?
The fact that our ancestors commonly died of tuberculosis doesn't mean they where happy to do so.
Both firefighters and doctors are a relatively recent “invention”
So what? What does that have to do with anything?
you could say that... even sex-workers are more essential than doctors and fire-fighters.
You can say that, but you'd be wrong. That's the great thing about the internet. Anyone can say anything no matter how false it is, and they get to be on an equal footing with people who know what they are talking about.
Do you call a Walmart cashier to save a baby? Wine story employee? Cannabis dispensary staff? I felt insulted that in the country I live in luxury wine stores were essential and open throughout the lockdown while gyms were not. If I can forego gym for a few months, sure as hell you can survive without a bottle of Bordeaux. And this is with all the rhetorics about public health.
> I thought it was more insulting for that person to value the work of hairdressers and manicurists and yoga instructors on an equal basis with firefighters, doctors, paramedics, and actual real "essential" workers.
Part of fairness is in treating equal things equally, and unequal things unequally.
Even talking about non-first responders, the folks in supermarkets are more essential on this spectrum than beauticians of various niches IMHO.
You ninja'd your comment into something completely different... Responsing to your original comment about MREs: the supply chains for supermarkets already exist. I'd be very surprised if there were enough MREs to feed everyone for a year and then still have the ability to restart normal supply chains from a dead stop.
Regular people shop at supermarkets so they don't starve. Armies carry food supplies so they don't have to shop at local supermarkets. They bring barbers because tight haircuts are essential to military dress and clean shaved faces are critical to tight sealing gas masks.
Yes, say for example few people have 2 weeks of food in their house. That makes the grocery store "essential" during a 15 day period. If the grocery store is essential for the 15 day period then all the activity that goes behind a working grocery store within a 15 day period is essential.
"Essential" is exactly it. I'm happy to take 2-4 weeks off the gym (switching to apartment calisthenics) to help flatten the curve, but once it drags on to months I'd have no moral qualms with joining an underground gym. Thankfully in my area gyms re-opened June 1st and looks like they're staying open.
Viewing it all through the lense of supply and demand is probably the best way to get a solid, dispassionate understanding of the situation. Specifically price inelasticity..
It also explains why workers in "essential" jobs are still low wage. An apparently baffling situation even though we were all taught the answer in highschool econ 101.
"Essential" is probably the right word, but I think "urgent" has a more accurate meaning. People urgently need groceries, being unable to buy groceries for a few weeks would be a big problem.
Some of the people who work in grocery stores commute via bike/car. Their bikes/cars will probably keep working for a while, but after a few months to a year they might need to visit a shop. The need for bike/car repair eventually becomes urgent.
Though, I'm not sure where hair salons fit into this framework. Most people have the means to cut their own hair, they just won't like how it looks.
I always thought they should have called them “authorized” activities and businesses. The optics wouldn’t allow it, but it would have been more accurate all around and avoided these misunderstandings.
I think it's more than just optics, though. If they were called "authorized" businesses, it wouldn't just look bad - it'd be blindingly obvious why the specific set of shut down businesses should be responsive to public pressure and desires, rather than staying at some fixed level until public health authorities say otherwise.
Essential depends on your goal. “Minimize disease at all costs until the vaccine arrives” is different from “intercept this acute spike” is different from “find a new normal we can live with for the long haul.”
I think "tolerable enough to our constituents that most of the people here are still here after the next election" is the threshold most state legislatures were trying not to cross.
While trying to buy workout equipment off craig's list I was solicited twice to join "speakeasy" gyms. They had ads for a bunch of gear and when I inquired they sent me a detailed response on working out in their private gym. One was a large neighborhood garage that offered solo time by the hour, one was a shutdown normal gym. Pretty expensive too!
Dumbbells are going for > $2-3/lb on various websites right now, which is insane. Adjustable dumbbells are going for > $10/lb, which is over twice their usual sticker price.
Gyms could lease out their equipment right now and make a killing.
I sought out adjustable dumbbells for a month. Ridiculous prices on Kijiji, and full of scams. Thankfully I eventually found a place out in Brampton that was welding their own, for relatively reasonable prices.
(And thankfully my gym is now open. Until we get a second wave and it shuts down again.)
Damn. Making weights would have been good business!
I have some resistance bands and used to use my buildings gym but they made the process very convoluted since reopening. And with max time limits of 30 minutes each and only 10 visits a month.
That said I was very sick recently and lost a lot of muscle mass and weight so I’m barely getting back to exercising now anyway.
Are these speakeasy gyms? Seems like a solo room and a much less crowded gym would both adhere to distancing policies. Seems rude to existing customers to set up a new private gym in an existing gym space, though.
I wonder how Anytime fitness is doing now? There is a market for a by the session small gyms. How about outdoor gyms, seem some in LA which are on rooftops.
It's not just gyms. It's underground bars, hair salons, hot stone yoga joints, and all kinds of things.
While the hair salons were closed, my wife's hairdresser was texting her every three days to get her into her underground makeshift totally illegal hair place.
And slightly realated, quarantines don't work when people aren't actually quarantined. There was an article in the newspaper last week or the week before about all the people from California driving into Nevada to get their hair done.
Just what the world needs: People who make poor health decision driving around the country.
Masks aren't 100% effective so being in close contact with someone for such a long time (a haircut for women can take much longer than a typical trim for men) carries a high risk of transmission from an asymptomatic carrier.
I find this to be one of the funniest supposed differences between genders.
I'm trans male, so I've gotten both female and male haircuts. Female haircuts generally took much less time. Put the hair in a ponytail, one snip, tidy up a little. Even a buzz cut takes a little bit longer. It's also much easier to cut long hair yourself than short hair, and people with long hair can go much longer between hair cuts. It took me a while to realize that men's haircut needs to be cut every 2-3 months instead of the once or maybe twice a year I was used to.
Hair dying definitely takes longer, but it seems that can be done at home easily as well.
Thanks for voicing this! I've been cutting hair as a hobby for years (it's funny, I got questioned a lot why I felt it was worth cutting my own hair and suddenly with the onset of the pandemic a lot of friends of mine are much more interested in the hobby), and the number of folks that think female haircuts are more involved/difficult is astounding. Unless long hair is very overgrown and needs to be relayered, it's generally really simple to trim it. Men's haircuts are short enough that small mistakes are glaringly obvious, and the haircuts need regular maintenance. My partner had some trepidation when I first cut her hair, but since then she's recommended me to her friends (well, pre-pandemic at least). She did short hair for a while and found the constant maintenance to be a huge pain.
What evidence from the US can you present that people will universally wear masks or that they'd wear them correctly? It's far easier to accept that they won't correctly wear masks and this path of exploration fails at step 0.
That's roughly equivalent to asking "if someone drives drunk, will they kill someone else or not?" Many times, they won't hurt anyone, but I hope it's not controversial that driving drunk is still extremely dangerous.
Today I learned that getting a haircut with a mask on is equivalent to driving drunk, but protesting or going to a grocery store with a mask on is not.
I'm confused, if the participants wear a mask, will the virus be transmitted or not?
For some, it's not about whether the virus is transmitted or not, it's about the moral implications of deliberately violating the law.
But considering these underground places aren't licensed, regulated, or inspected, I expect they're more risky than a regular place. There's very good health and sanitation reasons that hair cutting places are regulated in the first place.
> And slightly realated, quarantines don't work when people aren't actually quarantined.
Which is an excellent point, which may make some wonder if it was realistic to try in the first place. It's like imagine if the US govt forced everyone to lose weight and then was shocked that people were hoarding ding dongs in the underground market. "How dare those illegal ding dong hoarders break the law!"
If we're going to make laws that are fundamentally against human nature (see also drug prohibition laws, which is also has parallels to TFA), we shouldn't be surprised that some people don't follow these rules.
I think a lot of people in this discussion are pitting the argument at people prioritizing their individual choices over the collective health of the community. I think that is a very singular framing from one side. A lot of people I know just believe that the virus itself is not as deadly as the reaction warrants. The infectious mortality rate of Covid is at best twice that of the normal flu, which isn't nothing and warrants action but probably not 40M people unemployed and possible national depression. The fact is if your under 30 you have a better chance of being hit by lightning then dying of Covid. It's pretty rational for someone to understand that and make personal choices without feeling like they're causing real danger to the community.
Best data I've seen is 6x (.63% IFR). And due to lack of existing immunity from the Flu which keeps the flu at less than 10% of the population/yr, we're looking at a dramatic death toll.
That people don't want to believe it, without evidence to the contrary, just makes them solidly into the wishful thinking category - and likely spreaders that will inevitably get someone killed.
Even at 6x, it still very much comes up for debate. Most reasonable people can agree that a .01% IFR is not worth shutting everything down for, and that a 50% IFR is definitely worth shutting everything down for. Where you fall on this spectrum determines whether someone will call you a wishful thinker or not. Everyone believes their own opinion is the best.
Is this just a way of saying that people who don't agree with you aren't reasonable? What do we do with those people's opinions if they are the majority?
No, it is setting a wide range and excluding the extremes -- that is, people who aren't even within spitting distance of a good faith debate. 0.01% IFR would be 1/10th of the seasonal flu. And 50% would be up there with bubonic plague. I feel pretty comfortable with my definition of 'reasonable people.'
That's ridiculous. Maybe they're "exterminated" it temporarily. There's absolutely no way the entire world will be rid of it if we ever expect to get international travel back.
SARS-CoV-1 was exterminates wasn’t it? You been worried about Ebola or TB recently? We’ve gotten really far with some muscle. But for some reason lots is ppl gave up on Cov19 real fast.
Lol okay I used poetic license. The point is we had international travel and was not under lockdown due to these other diseases because they're under control. Maybe the ship has sailed for C19 but just saying it's possible.
In addition to IFR we should also consider the rate at which a virus spreads. COVID-19 appears to more powerful than regular flu on this front as well.
Not "possible depression". Depression. The economy crashed. It's over. The government's been buying the stock market to prop everything up. All the numbers you see are fabricated. The market never recovered from the initial crash.
Last I checked a 3rd of Americans aren't paying rent now? It's going to explode dude.
The stock market recovery is not due to the government "buying the stock market" because they never did that.
If you look at winners and losers in the stock market, followed the Q2 earnings season and saw what companies were facing, it seems clear to me that our economy faced a transition rather than a crash. There are huge winners in this market. Home Depot, Target, and other major retailers all announced record breaking income this past quarter. People are still shopping. Tech has lead the charge due to WFH and the shift to online. There are many more factors in this economic shift than could be explained by the Fed's money printing.
>The stock market recovery is not due to the government "buying the stock market" because they never did that
Whether they directly bought stocks is irrelevant because money's fungible. They injected trillions of dollars into the economy[1]. If that drove institutional investors to stocks from treasuries/bonds (in search of higher returns), the effect is identical to them buying stocks directly.
There has actually been interesting speculation that the Fed will eventually buy stocks similar to the Bank of Japan over the past few decades [1] but the Fed hasn’t done it yet.
(Edit: Maybe GP was thinking that bankruptcy could lead to debt converting into equity? But even then the Fed’s holding would be indirect and the bond ETF probably wouldn’t hold onto the equity.)
Nah, All these financiers are just getting caught up in semantics trying to ignore the reality of the situation. No the fed doesn't "own" anything, because they haven't "bought" anything.
The fact remains that they've spent over a trillion dollars on junk bonds and they are almost singlehandedly financing the entire economy right now.
How much actual buying and selling have they done? How does that compare to a year ago? How does that compare to the market as a whole? Those are actually relevant, while the government just having some stock is not, so those are what we should be looking at.
Whatever helps you sleep at night. Just don't be surprised when you wake up tomorrow and can't afford to buy a loaf of bread with your american monopoly money.
AFAIK global capitalism has been in an over production crisis since at least 2008. So it's not a depression due to covid-19, but a worsening of the existing depression due to covid-19.
Still, those on top are still raking in profit - arguably the crisis isn't that we suddenly are running out of energy, food or housing - just that we're distributing it so badly that we've created poor living conditions for a lot of people.
To amplify this, while I appreciate the passion some people have for community health, there has been a pattern of bald-faced lying that is unsustainable and potentially counterproductive. I can see somebody going to the gym and not feeling bad about it for that reason alone.
As most authoritarian-collectivist movements go, the "Stay the fuck home" crowd took no time at all in destroying all goodwill towards their worldview.
Had its tone been more educational and pleading instead of arrogant, shaming and outright threatening they could have avoided polarizing the conversation and creating a contrarian counter-movement that resists even sensible compromise.
Lives are at stake here, so the "Stay the fuck home" crowd, as you put it, has a right to express feelings that may be stronger than "educational and pleading."
You might feel the stakes are higher than other people, just like there are people who probably elevate issues like, say, gun control to a similar level of urgency. That's the whole basis for discourse in a society.
If it was truly that urgent I would hope the "stay home" crowd could act pragmatically by taking a more receptive tone. That's belied by a truly frightening undertone of violence that I see simmering underneath the messaging, e.g. "Can't we just throw all the anti-maskers in prison?"
But that's precisely the problem. While you may think this way, someone else may not. So when you try to convince that person from an assumption that they agree with you on the importance of the premise, you fall flat.
Lives are at stake for every single large scale event or decision. McDonalds changing the price of their fries, in either direction, has lives at stake.
If you can't calmly and dispassionately discuss "lives at stake" situations you have no business in any conversation of importance.
Interestingly. Many have been clamly and dispassionately discussing a "lives at stake" situation called Climate Change and there hasn't been much meaningful action.
Also, i find this rebuttal interesting. Why do humans have to be dispassionate? We are humans. Getting rid of the passion really seems dehumanising.
I'm tired of hearing about "the new normal". This is NOT normal, and the weak attempts to make it normal is just disgusting. Like you said, this isn't as deadly as people first thought it was, but it seems that those in charge don't want to admit that they're wrong, and as a result everybody is suffering from this even if they really wouldn't suffer from COVID.
When the virus hit China, it had around a 4% death rate. Now, in the US, we have 5.6M confirmed cases, and 175k deaths. That is 3% death rate. (although, deaths lag behind diagnosis) You're right, its less than they first feared, but not much. And still 30 times the death rate of the flu. There have been some groups that keep looking at the number of deaths, and compare it to the population as a whole, to make the numbers look much smaller. But those are purposefully deceptive.
and how many unconfirmed cases? I personally know 10 people who have had symptoms that are likely covid, but not serious enough to go get tested. The fact that the least symptomatic patients are also least likely to get tested means that the calculation you presented gives us, at best, an upper bound. A better way to get the true measure would be based on population-based antibody testing.
In what sense is CFR meaningful? What can you do with that number? There is little consistency between countries in testing rates or the criteria of what counts as a "case".
Assuming that the probability of being hit by lightning is higher than the probability of dying from COVID under 30, it does not follow that one should take the similar levels of precaution for both. Lightning does not present systemic risk. Me getting struck by lightning doesn't change your odds of being struck.
A relevant factor for countries that have largely controlled covid, or back in March when it was uncertain what direction which countries were going in. For ones that have just let it rip though, the people who were going to get it from you are just going to get it from someone else if you isolate.
If I as an Australian have covid and go to a gym and infect a bunch of people, I've given covid to people who otherwise wouldn't have caught it. If an American does the same, they've given covid to people who would have just caught it next week or next month. They've also given it to less people because a lot more people in that gym have already had it than in my Australian one.
"Of these 127 [COVID-19 cases], 8 (6.3% [CI, 2.1% to 10.5%]) were asymptomatic. Of the 119 symptomatic cases, 20 (16.8%) were defined as mild, 87 (73.1%) as moderate, and 12 (10.1%) as severe or critical."
6.3% of transmissions being asymptomatic doesn't sound rare to me.
Also, the 89.9% of people with mild or moderate cases may still not realize they have covid, and spread it.
It's also worth noting that there is confusion between "asymptomatic" and "pre-symptomatic". In the health industry apparently "asymptomatic" means you never present symptoms, however you can be "pre-symptomatic"(meaning you will present symptoms) and spread the disease as well. The media had been using "asymptomatic" to mean both, but then a study came out saying it was rare and blah blah blah.
Should I be surprised how many people on HN have resorted to conspiracy theories, accusations of malice, and discreditation over changing and mixed information? We live in a world of changing requirements but somehow changing recommendations based on new and changing information is all the evidence we need to indulge ourselves in confirmation bias?
Vulnerable people have needs that are supplied by the broader community (food, medicines, medical care, etc) so it's impossible to fully isolate vulnerable populations.
let's do like, china and directly deliver food to them. Every citizen of the us has been sent a 1200 check, US is able to fund a service like that also
In the UK the warning was BMI of over 35 needs to be careful, >40 needs to isolate. That would be a hell of a lot of americans. Plus the diabetics, heart issues, elderly etc.
I don't know what the ripple effect is. Might be very close (after all, less than half the americans do work).
And you don't need that many people to isolate for the house of cards to crumble. Plenty shops need to close because 30% fewer customers isn't enough to sustain them
It doesn't seem like immunocompromise generally constitutes a disability by that definition, without satisfying some other criteria. But I'm not a lawyer, so what do I know.
The text of the law makes it more explicit: "[...] a major life activity also includes the operation of a major bodily function, including but not limited to, functions of the immune system [...]"
It's ignorant to simply look at the mortality rate of the disease. You have to also consider how transmissible the disease is. If you infected the entire US population with the flu over the course of a few months it would be complete devastation even though it's just "the normal flu" in terms of how an individual's immune system deals with it.
By this logic COVID19 is nothing compared to SARS or EBOLA because those have higher mortality rates, but obviously COVID spreads much faster and farther so it has had a huge international impact.
Focusing on the death rate as a singular statistic is highly flawed. It’s akin to not taking into account health externalities when discussing the coast of energy sources.
COVID-19 has pretty severe morbidity that make it absolutely nothing like the flu. Some afflicted with severe cases will require months of rehabilitation (never mind working as usual) and probably suffer lifelong complications.
Moreover, it’s the hubris and ignorance of people like the speakeasy gym goers that will prolong the pandemic and arguably case more economic harm than any original lockdowns.
In regards to how dangerous it is, there are two other important factors - the number of people that don't get terribly ill, but suffer long term effects - and the fact that if any local/regional health system is overwhelmed - all those survivors who needed intubation would have been casualties. I'm not sure how that would affect the effective mortality rate.
> I think a lot of people in this discussion are pitting the argument at people prioritizing their individual choices over the collective health of the community. I think that is a very singular framing from one side
> The fact is if your under 30 you have a better chance of being hit by lightning then dying of Covid
Yes, but what about the other members of the community who aren't below 30 who you might infect? Thinking "I'm under 30, so I'll be fine" and not worrying about the fact that you could still spread the disease to others is pretty much a textbook example of "prioritizing individual choices over the collective health of the community".
> It's pretty rational for someone to understand that and make personal choices without feeling like they're causing real danger to the community.
Discounting externalized costs to zero is rational, true; that's the source of the tragedy of commons (in the economics/game theory sense, not necessarily the somewhat disputed original example for which the effect is named.)
But that's a manner in which individual rationality is insufficient to address issues whose effects aren't limited to the individuals engaging in transactions.
While you raise a good point, I question the wisdom of relying solely on hastily devised rules and accompanying sloganeering to solve such issues.
I understand the pandemic is an emergency, but it was predictable. If we got caught with our pants down, we got caught with our pants down. Personally I think it’s time to put the hysteria aside and start discussing the longer-term view.
> It's pretty rational for someone to understand that and make personal choices...
No, it's not; it's arrogant.
All of the epidemiologists and experts seem to think otherwise. What do you know that they don't?
So far 172,000 people have died in the US due to Coronavirus, directly[1]. The actual number of people who have died, if you factor in the effect of the virus on infrastructure and missed diagnoses is about double that[2].
We're approaching the total death toll of World War II[3].
Your claim that it's comparable to lightning, which kills about 50 people per year in the USA, is completely inaccurate and displays a grandiose arrogance. An arrogance that, nationwide, has resulted in a staggering number of tragedies this year.
> We're approaching the total death toll of World War II[3].
We're really not though. World War II killed somewhere in the ballpark of 75 million people. COVID-19 has a bit under 800,000 known deaths. Even if we say that for every person who is known to have died of covid, 5 additional people died and were recorded as deaths from other causes (and it's not that high, you can check the excess mortality stats to confirm for yourself that it couldn't possibly be that high), the number of covid deaths _still_ wouldn't even be 10% of the total number of WWII deaths.
Unless by "approaching" you mean "getting closer to because it's currently below that number and increasing" in which case the number of people killed by vending machines is also "approaching" the number of people killed by WWII.
Hyperbolic statements like this just serve to undermine trust, and trust is already in pretty short supply, especially around the pandemic. Messaging around the pandemic has had a pattern of people making whatever statements they think is most likely to get people to comply with public health guidance, even if those statements are false or misleading.
For example, there's a great deal of news lately about how COVID-19 can cause Multisystem Inflammation Syndrome (MIS-C) in children, and that 80% of children who develop MIS-C require intensive care, and that the existence of MIS-C as a possible complication of covid means you should worry more about kids getting covid. What these articles neglect to mention is that only about 300 cases of MIS-C have been observed in children, out of what is probably low-millions of children infected with covid.
When you make misleading statements in order to induce compliance through panic, it'll work the first few times, but eventually people will start noticing, and stop trusting anything you or anyone who sounds like you says, even if it's true. This is the moral of the "Boy Who Cried Wolf" story, and it's been seen again and again in real-life contexts as well (see for example how DARE actually _increases_ drug use).
Making false-but-alarming statements about public health sucks the air out of the room for true-and-alarming statements about public health, and is the moral equivalent of crying wolf except with millions of lives on the line instead of just one village.
I think he meant US deaths because his source is a list of WWII deaths by country. That is actually fairly accurate: 170K direct, he assumes ~2x if you count indirect, so ~400K which is indeed approaching total US WWII casualities (460K or so).
Even if you don't count or differently count indirect deaths, I'd still say going from 0 to 170K in 6 months with no end in sight definitely constitutes "approaching". We'll get there before this is all over, for sure.
Ok, but WWII wasn't really a horrifying war because of the number of _American_ casualties. The US lost 0.35% of its population as casualties to WWII, which was pretty close to the percentage of the _world_ population, _including non-participating countries_, that died in WWII (0.33%). Russia, which _was_ a good example of a country that got hit hard by WWII, lost 15%.
By contrast, the US _is_ one of the countries hit hardest by covid -- the US has about 5x the number of deaths per capita as the world average.
It's a little less egregious if the original poster meant "US casualties in WWII vs US deaths from covid" but it's still a misleading comparison.
I agree "US casualties in WWII vs US deaths from covid" is far more appropriate. OP forgot to say US and you were right to point this out.
Past that, at some point it's hard for me to take this sort of thing too seriously. OP probably doesn't have a copy editor for the online comments he's writing from the shitter/waiting for the coffee brewer.
It's a reasonable comparison because, sans COVID context, literally every American would answer "yes" to the question "did lots of Americans die in WWII?"
Not disputing your overall point, but this is with preventative measures, such as lockdown, quarantine, use of masks, social distancing, etc.
I have seen various estimates with factors such as 35x the number of cases without preventative measures. Right now, there are 5.5 million cases and 172,000 deaths in the USA.
With a more conservative factor, like 15x, a quick ballpark at current ratios of cases/deaths puts that at 82.5 million cases and 2.4 million deaths without preventative measures in the USA, and more considering worldwide cases. Not as bad as WWII, but it is in the range of the Korean War (est 1.5 to 4.5 million deaths) or the Vietnam War (est 2.4 to 4.3 million deaths).
I find myself doubting the 35x number, and even the 15x number. For the 35x number, there are 328M people in the US. Divide that by 35, and you get 9.3M. Under the most generous possible assumptions, with no preventative measures, 100% of the US population would get COVID, and with the current preventative measures, there will be no new COVID cases after today. Under those assumptions, there could be no more than 9.4M people who have caught COVID in the US. There are currently 5.6M people who have tested positive in the US, so that means that under the most generous possible assumptions, at least 60% of the people who were infected with COVID have to have been tested, tested positive, and had that positive test recorded in the statistics.
For the 35x number to be true, all of the following have to be true. Those assumptions are, with maximum generosity
1: With no preventative measures, at least 60% of the US population would be infected with COVID-19 (assumes no further infections after today and that 100% of people infected, including asymptomatic people, have tested positive for COVID-19).
2: At least 60% of the people in the US who will be infected with COVID-19 have already been infected with COVID-19 (assumes 100% of the population would be infected without preventative measures, and that 100% of people infected, including asymptomatic people, have tested positive for COVID-19).
3: At least 60% of the people in the US who have been infected with COVID-19, including asymptomatic people, have tested positive (assumes no further infections after today and 100% of the population would be infected without preventative measures).
Note that while "all of the following are true" is _necessary_ for the 35x number to be true, they're not _sufficient_ -- evenly distributing the burden, change all of the "60%"s to "84%"s to get an example of what a world where the 35x number is accurate.
Going in order on my objections to those assumptions, and what I think more realistic numbers look like:
> 1: With no preventative measures, at least 60% of the US population would be infected with COVID-19:
The R0 of COVID-19 is probably between 2.79 and 3.28[1]. We'll go with the higher of these two numbers (3.28) for our upper bound. That means each infected person, in a population with no infected people, will spread the disease to 3.28 other people. In a world of uncontrolled spread, the spread stops when the average infected person comes in contact with less than one person who is susceptible to the disease, so once 1 - 1/3.28 (~70%) of the population has been infected, the spread stops. This gives us an upper bound of 70% for what fraction of the population gets infected.
In real life, that R0 is made up of some people who will spread the disease to an average of 50 people, and others who will spread it to an average of 0.1 people. People who are likely to spread COVID widely are more likely to be the people spreading the disease and are also more likely to be the people infected people "try to" spread the disease to -- a cashier who interacts with 1000 customers a day has 1000 chances to catch COVID from one of their customers, and 1000 chances to pass it on, so they're likely to be infected early on. The people most likely to catch COVID will, in the long term, be the most likely to be immune, lowering the effective rate of spread much more rapidly than the naive model would predict. Estimates for the actual herd immunity levels vary, but as a lower bound let's go with the number Gomes et. al. come up with[2] and say 10% is our lower bound.
Being very rigorous and scientific, let's split the difference between our upper and lower bounds and say 35% of the population would get COVID-19 if the spread was uncontrolled.
Moving on:
> 2: At least 60% of the people in the US who will be infected with COVID-19 have already been infected with COVID-19
Assuming no third wave, cases per day will continue to trend down over time. Currently, it looks like cases per day are decreasing by something like 0.5% per day, and there are about 50,000 cases per day currently in the US. If that trend continues, we end up at about 15M total positive tests. If the trend accelerates to about a 1.2% per day decrease in positive tests, we do end up with only about 9.5M positive tests, so "60% of the positive tests that will happen, in total, have already happened" is not _completely_ outside the realm of possibility. On the other hand, if there _is_ a third wave, we're gonna end up with more than 15M positive tests.
I'll use the "no third wave, 0.5% decrease per day" estimate of 15M positive tests when all is said and done.
> 3: At least 60% of the people in the US who have been infected with COVID-19, including asymptomatic people, have tested positive
This one seems extremely implausible to me. Tests are fairly hard to come by, expensive, and discouraged for people who have not been in contact with someone known to have COVID-19, at least in the US. Furthermore, a significant fraction of cases are either asymptomatic or very mild, and those people are unlikely to be tested. It's hard to get an exact estimate of the fraction of total cases that are tested, but several researchers have taken a crack at it (example[3]), and estimate that between 3 on the low end and 24(!) times as many people have been infected as have tested positive.
We'll go with a factor of 5, because that's a nice round number on the low end of the range and really the 24 number sounds pretty implausible. Maybe back in April when tests were in very short supply, but certainly not now.
Putting all these numbers together, we get
5.6M * 5 = 28M people in the US have caught COVID-19 so far.
15M * 5 = 75M people in the US will catch COVID-19 when all is said and done.
328M * 0.35 = 115M people in the US would have caught COVID-19 if the spread was left unchecked.
So by a back-of-the-envelope calculation, we should expect the precautions have decreased the spread by a factor of 115M / 75M ~= 1.5, with a fairly wide margin of uncertainty (but I'd say almost certainly not higher than ~3 or lower than ~1). Certainly not a factor of 35 or even a factor of 12.
>> We're approaching the total death toll of World War II[3].
assuming you mean the US death toll also bear in mind the median age of WW II casualties was something like 26; while the median age for covid victims is 75+. Not to diminish the latter but they are very different.
What's the point of the question? What would you argue? Yeah, obviously everyone dies, but when is the important part. It's generally agreed that shortening someone's time to live is one of the biggest offenses possible (if not the biggest). How does that question change that notion?
It directly implies that if we prefer dying later to dying sooner (in almost all cases) that older peoples lives would have statistically less value. Which is anathema to many Americans. The only way around it is to say you are indifferent to when death is for people, which is also anathema to a lot of people. It’s a paradox of our ethical system.
If you consider that shortening someone's life is not a continuum but discreetly bad, then there is no paradox. Moreover, I consider that to be the only ethical way to view it. If you take the life expectancy of the victim when judging the killer, you may find yourself giving lighter sentences for those who kill impoverished people, who have a shorter life expectancy, than those who kill rich people.
Yes, it is less of a tragedy when an old person dies. Old people have less of their life to lose and have less remaining potential to contribute to society. The death of children is always more tragic than the death of elderly people.
This isn't a perspective exclusive to young people either. Last year my grandfather died and my cousin had a miscarriage. My grandmother was far more distraught over the latter because she understood that her husband, who she'd loved for nearly 60 years, had already lived a full happy life. She said as much explicitly.
It may be a cultural thing too. It is a lot faster to produce young unqualified people than a really senior person. We are losing minds like John Conway.
Anyway, I'd say my grandfather and cousin deaths (non-covid related) had about the same impact on me. Dying is the tragedy of being alive, I suppose.
Explicitly being turned away? I have not seen those. The New York Times did an analysis of the overall death rate, however, and setting aside COVID deaths, it is up. It's not an unreasonable assumption to assume at least some of those are lack of medical care for whatever reason.
It's because people are afraid to go to hospital or call paramedics, they actually did a mini-campaign over here in the UK telling people it's still ok to call 999 (our 911) because they were so concerned about the deaths happening at home that could have been avoided.
the health system was never "overwhelmed" except for brief periods and in specific locales. My spouse is in healthcare, they have still not recovered their normal census. If anything there will be a huge spike in cancer deaths due to late diagnosis etc as people have stayed away.
I am saying people will die from cancer, because covid kept them out of the hospitals and clinics. Its better now, but back in march thru june many hospitals were laying off staff due to the cancellation of almost all routine procedures etc.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/10/metro/tracking-lay-of...
I think the link you cited states that 48 is the median age of infections, whereas the person you're replying to is talking about deaths. I don't have national data, but in my state (Indiana) 51.4% of deaths are 80+ years old according to coronavirus.in.gov
This is a gross mischaracterizatuon of the posters argument. They are claiming that, based on the information they provided, the people they’re referring to are making a rational choice. Working off of different information is a different matter. They also never claimed that covid is comparable to lightning, just that if you’re under 30 you’re more likely to be struck by lightning than die of covid (I cant speak to the statistical truth of this, but that’s beside the point).
> (I cant speak to the statistical truth of this, but that’s beside the point)
Is it beside the point? It's false. Lightning kills about 50 people a year in the US [1]. It's frankly fairly rare to get struck by lightning [2]. More people under 34 have died from COVID-19 per month since April than die from lightning in a year [3] (quick note that the breakdown is 25-34). That's to say nothing of long term health impacts from the disease. If you are going to argue that it's a rational choice, you need to be working from correct assumptions.
And more importantly than that, getting struck by lightning does not mean you will make other people get struck by lightning. Making a choice that makes sense for you does not mean it makes sense for society. That's why we have laws.
OP said "hit by," not "killed by." I wasn't able to find a number for people being struck by lightning in a cursory search other than "hundreds more" than are killed by lightning.
The CDC link he posted for lightning data [1] said that your odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 500,000. Also according to the CDC [2], a total of 1,201 out of a population of ~40 million US people aged 25-34 [3] have died in a “COVID related death” in the US between February 1 and August 19. This represents 3.2% of deaths from all causes during this time period in this age range.
Assuming you believe these numbers to not be somewhat inflated despite widespread reporting of such incidents, the odds of dying from COVID as a 25-34 year old in the US are 1 in ~33,000. This is ~15x times the odds of being struck by lightning. However, I would imagine those odds go down significantly further among 25-34 year olds with no risk factors, and it is largely the people with no risk factors that are going to speakeasy gyms.
It seems strange to compare getting hit by lightning to dying from COVID-19. That doesn't strike me as a particularly useful comparison. That's also not comparing similar groups. People 25-34 are 1.83 times more likely to die from COVID than all people who are struck by lightning, regardless of age group.
I thought about that, and actually my original answer was the 1.83x number. But then I realized that the apples to apples comparison is 1 in 33,000, because among the 25-34 age group, 1201 out of 40 million in that age group have died. If we are looking solely at this age group, then we can’t dilute the number and say it’s 1201 out of the entire population across age groups.
Re:the relevance of the comparison, I was just responding to the conversation.
Wikipedia gives a fatality rate of ~10% with the citation below.
Cherington, J. et al. 1999: Closing the Gap on the Actual Numbers of Lightning Casualties and Deaths. Preprints, 11th Conf. on Applied Climatology, 379-80
Thing is... death by lightning strike is rare because we get out of the rain. If we took no preventative measures, then that number would increase dramatically.
> Working off of different information is a different matter.
Moral theories that do not demand intellectual character are broken. Sincerely believing in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion does not excuse anti-semitism. Sincerely believing whatever nonsense is coming out of a youtube recommendation k-hole does not excuse ignoring the advice of public health experts.
Moral character does not exist without intellectual character.
> They also never claimed that covid is comparable to lightning
Yes they did.
> just that if you’re under 30 you’re more likely to be struck by lightning than die of covid.
That is a comparison.
> (I cant speak to the statistical truth of this, but that’s beside the point).
~50 deaths due to lightening strikes across all age groups. We were already close to 1000 confirmed COVID deaths for folks under 34 in mid-June.
Making a rational choice from what angle? If you consider death of your fellow countrymen just a statistic, maybe.
These are super-emotional topics, something on par with politics. My view is that even if it would be just out of respect of older generations who made the world we live today, raised us, protected us, guided us, we should be considerate.
Now we might end up in economical tragedy vastly worse then just letting them die, but that's a threshold we didn't yet cross according to most people here/out there. Hence all the reactions like closures and restrictions and vast majority complying with them.
Another aspect is utterly incompetent leaders, who's countries they mismanage seem to be, purely from rational point of view, currently holding premium places in covid charts. US, UK, Brazil, Russia etc. Seems like some pattern about how far lying and plain stupid ignorance can get you when confronted with something as little caring as virus.
Best case in term of covid related death is to keep everyone at home, no freedom and get food delivery directly at the door
Worst case, is to do as nothing happened
There are a spectrum of possible responses. But we have to accept that some people are going to die if we want other to live.
Each group can put the cursor where it wants, but you can't have, no death and complete freedom. Some people prefer that a few people die if the rest of people is free, then some other prefer everyone to be alive and restrict the freedom of everyone else. You can't put the cursor for other people than you
This post highlights my favorite part of the keep everyone home argument: "get food delivery directly at the door."
Who delivers the food if we keep everyone home? There is a subtle classist underpinning to the entire "Stay The Fuck Home" message which really shows how little people value others, especially lower-class (food delivery) or blue collar (food supply) workers. Everyone needs to stay home, except for the deplorables that will grow, process, and serve food directly to my door.
This line of reasoning evades the real problem by trying to recast the issue as a balancing of risks rather than an undervaluing of a segment of our society. Let's return to the original poster's argument: there exist two extremes with one being "everyone stays at home" and the other being "no change due to COVID." Even in the extreme of "everyone stays at home" there is an implicit assumption that not everyone stays at home, just people with white collar jobs. That is the issue that I am calling out with my "subtle classist underpinnings" statement.
Additionally, it is worth noting that the risk-based analysis you use is 1) an exercise in line drawing (giving everyone their own office while at work is certainly equal or less exposure than food delivery as long as people don't socialize at work) and 2) an after the fact justification for a policy that is undeniably inequitable across class, race, and sex lines.
I was addressing the comparative risks of delivery vs (presumably the same worker cohort) offering sit-down service. Delivery is a net reduced risk exposure.
That still leaves the net cohort differential, pre-Covid to Covid, of (shared-workspace, public-facing) essential service workers, and work-from-home office and profesional workers. That's a real concern.
I'd identify concerns as both those of fairness and net commonweal. I'm willing to sacrifice choice in consideration both interests, at least during exigent circumstances.
Commonweal demands reducing net risk. This means both maintaining work-from-home policies for those capable of doing so, and providing delivery and bulk-service preparation (foodservice, manufacture, delivery, etc.).
Keep in mind that whilst the pandemic is worldwide, it is not felt equally in all locations. This makes geographic arbitrage onnthe basis of risk possible: manufacturing and services which can be exported from quarantine zones should be. The resulting downtime can be mitigated via social benefits.
Safety measures can and should be implemented in workplaces. I'm well aware that this is often not the case.
Differential unavoidable essential risks borne by one cohort can be compensated by others, through raised wages, tax hikes or credits, or other financial means.
The possibility of "immunity passports" has been suggested from early in the outbreak. It's still not clear that this is realistically an option, but there are 15 millions worldwide and 3 millions in the US who've recovered from Covid at this writing. That is a sizable potential high-exposure workforce.
And finally, there is the option of mandating rotations in high-exposure roles. This most directly addresses equity, and might build community through common bond, shared experience, and sense of collective risk and responsibility. Sort of a Covid Draft or Covid Lottery.
Would any of these address your concerns, or do you have additional suggestions?
Though I agree it is classist (and probably a fair number of other "ists") and it's something that I as a white collar worker am keenly aware of, the fact is that if I can stay home, it's better for everyone -- including food service workers -- if I do. My class guilt will not protect people from infection.
I really don't know what the answer here is, but risk mitigation has to be part of the debate. It feels like the culture wars of class, personal freedom, social risk, public shame, etc have supplanted questions of "how do we keep all of the people who keep the engine of society running safe and how do we compensate them fairly for their work?" and "how do we ensure that everyone else does not engage in risky activity simply because they must do so to live."
This is all starting to get away from the core point of the article, which is that people will always find a way to engage in any activity that is illegal, but perhaps if we could address the issues above, the question of speakeasy gyms wouldn't seem so critical because we'd be safe in other areas of our life.
I find in practice that the people in my life better for my long term health set the cursor more towards "prevent needless death with relatively simple changes to behavior", and less towards "Raven in Snow Crash embedding a nuclear weapon into his body that will detonate if anyone tries to kill him".
I'm not sure where that opinion fits in a rigidly logical argument that prohibits sound judgment due to its ambiguity.
There have been 1424 deaths "involving" coronavirus in the ages 0 - 34 in the US[1]. What happens to that number when you discount for underlying conditions?
Close to 500,000 military personnel (read: military-aged) died in WW2. Sorry to be crude, but what the f*ck are you smoking?
I don't think we are approaching the total death toll of World War II. Unless you mean only US casualties which were relatively small compared to other nations as US entered war very late when it was already decided (Soviet Union has already won decisive victories and lost tens of millions). Proclaiming that is actually arrogant, to use your own words.
You could make the same argument about the normal flu, pre-covid, which kills many tens of thousands of people in the US every year. The normal flu has killed many multiples the number of people that WWII did. And we never completely locked down the country for the flu. We never explicitly destroyed the economy for the flu.
What about how many people other infectious diseases kill? What about how many people other sources of preventable deaths kill? Why haven't we thrown away our civil liberties in the past, or destroyed our economy, to tackle those problems?
Yikes, posting like this will get you banned on HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. We've had to ask you about this kind of thing before.
Could you please take the spirit of the site more to heart? HN is a community of millions of people in many countries. It is inevitably divided on any issue where society (societies) are deeply divided. We can't get anywhere by pretending otherwise. We can't get anywhere by trying to impose one view on everybody. We can't get anywhere by "fuck you".
While I emphatically reject the idea that the above poster has any role in any community anyone would wish to join, I do sincerely appreciate your efforts to moderate and I will avoid personal attacks in the future.
Excepting Walter Bright, that dude's a complete asshole.
>The infectious mortality rate of Covid is at best twice that of the normal flu, which isn't nothing and warrants action but probably not 40M people unemployed and possible national depression.
This sounds like Y2K all over again. No one is disputing the mortality rate. But it's starting to look like all the people who are pulling out that strawman are ignoring the "infectious" part of that equation.[1]
Do we have enough healthcare capacity to support the people who get sick enough to need care until herd immunity is achieved?
And the same people like to bring up Sweden, all the while conveniently forgetting the social mores and jokes. The headline image from this[0] story makes it very clear that what worked in Sweden would not work anywhere else in the world.
According to a review article published in BMC Medicine, the R0 value of the 1918 pandemic was estimated to be between 1.4 and 2.8.
But when the swine flu, or H1N1 virus, came back in 2009, its R0 value was between 1.4 and 1.6, report researchers in the journal Science.
The R0 for COVID-19 is a median of 5.7, according to a study published online in Emerging Infectious Diseases. That’s about double an earlier R0 estimate of 2.2 to 2.7
...
The researchers estimated a doubling time of 2 to 3 days, which is much faster than earlier estimates of 6 to 7 days. The doubling time is how long it takes for the number of coronavirus cases, hospitalizations, and deaths to double.
With an R0 of 5.7, at least 82 percent of the population needs to be immune to COVID-19 to stop its transmission through vaccination and herd immunity.
It's maybe rational if you're an Ayn Rand Objectivist and you think the older people you infect who die are not worth your time and energy to keep safe.
It's very much a selfish prioritization of the individual above everyone else to think you're under 30 so no precautions need to be taken even though someone under 30 is perfectly capable of passing it on to a whole bunch more people who might be older & vulnerable.
You're falling for the right wing deception here. This is a lot more deadly than the flu and the flu usually only kills those who would have died soon anyway. And even under 30 your odds of dying of Covid are worse than your odds of dying of a traffic accident. And even if you survive you might be damaged for life. It is not rational to fall for a scam.
I think it is a bit unfortunate that the conversation has completely derailed. The article wanted to talk about prohibition and how it doesn't work (it just makes the product unregulated and sometimes dangerous, either it be a gym or drugs), and the discussion here seems to go on and on about mask wearing and social distancing. I'm sure we've all seen this discussion before.
so many comments arguing about what everyone in aggregate is morally obligated to abstain from or morally permitted to partake in. meanwhile the article itself is just about what people end up doing. "the government closed the gyms. lots of people want to exercise together and/or with expensive bulky equipment so they make illegal gyms." no amount of ethics lawyering is going to change this
honestly I think the phased reopenings are partly to blame, once you say "this is important enough, that isn't" everyone wants to do their things and disparage other people's things. if they closed the gyms here again, I'd find an illegal one. if they closed the restaurants, or the churches, or the schools, I wouldn't care. but for the people who derive existential fulfillment from their religion, or can't tolerate taking care of their children 24/7, or [insert reason why people care about restaurants, I honestly don't understand the upside anymore], my desire to go to my gym is selfish and wrong but their need for their thing is inherently good and right
not to mention the fact that most of the country isn't locked down, and there's no internal borders, and most people didn't take lockdowns seriously after the first month or two of kumbaya we're all in this together stuff anyway. so your individual actions wouldn't even move the needle. there's a continuum between the hypervigilent closed societies where one person gets it and they shut down the city, and the endemic countries where it's already everywhere anyway so the best you can do is mitigate risk to a tolerable level and go on with your life. new zealand, south korea, taiwan vs. mexico, india, brazil. we're with india and brazil
and I don't think it could have gone any other way. americans are suspicious and callous toward their countrymen and deathly allergic to being told what to do. for better or worse, it's just in our blood. gotta make the best of it
How figurative is the blood you're referring to here?
I'm a naturalized US citizen from a country that dealt well with the pandemic. I wasn't born in my heritage country, and so have always identified first as an American. But, recent events demonstrating the "uglier" side of America's sociocultural norms has left me wondering if >~40% of the country I recognize as home don't consider me a worthwhile part of it.
Where I live gyms have been open for some time. There's been no outbreaks at fitness facilities thus far in my state. I have friends in various countries in Europe who also lift regularly and their fitness facilities have been open for months with no issues.
Did you read the article? It stated that the "underground" gyms had people close together without wearing masks. (This can be understood to be due to prohibition, of course.)
Is that the case with the fitness centers in your state?
It's definitely the case in my gym, which has been open for 3 months now. It's unavoidable that people get close to each other without a mask in a gym. No one is going to give a shit because the equipment is shared anyway.
I saw an engineering services company I know of post a new job position for a "care coordinator" to babysit their employees kids, at work, while the employees work. My first thought was, isn't that a daycare? How is it different in the eyes of the law?
Edited- spelling
>My first thought was, isn't that a daycare? How is it different in the eyes of the law?
Childcare is one of those basic and ancient jobs that's accrued a lot of compex laws over the years. In PA, anyone caring for four or more children not related to them is required to get some sort of certification, even if they're doing it out of their house for friends for free. Home daycares aren't uncommon here.
I'm not sure about the laws in your area, but my money's on that business having to apply for certification and pass inspections. They'll probably hire a certified childcare worker.
I don't know about law, but it's less infectious than the normal situation in which kid's peers are from different families than parent's peers. Of course, it's much more infectious than actual isolation.
The last couple months has done more damage than good to me. I'm that type of person who'll lose muscle quickly if stops working out for mote than 2 weeks.
It's not about you. It's about everyone else.
How can someone be so selfish and self-absorbed that they think their "muscle mass" is more important than the health of hundreds or thousands of other people?
I know this question may violate some HN policy, but I can't help but ask: What's wrong with you?
> I know this question may violate some HN policy, but I can't help but ask: What's wrong with you?
There have been times in the past where I've made HN comments that were meant as constructive criticism to another HN user. But my accidental tone ruined any chance of my comment being helpful. @dang was gracious enough to provide me detailed feedback [0], and it seems to be working for me.
"Staying healthy" can be done with zero equipment and no gym membership. If you think otherwise, then your goal isn't to "stay healthy", your goal is to show off at gym bunnies. And no, your showing off and vanity is not a choice you get to make during a pandemic. Tough.
Sadly, this is the source of your downvotes. For so many (even here on HN of all places), it's all about ME. My freedom. My choices. My comfort. My convenience. My need to eat at that restaurant or buy that ranch dressing. My absolute right to do squats next to some random person at a gym. Anything that gets in the way of my freedom to do every little thing I want to do any time I want to do it is bad.
We're not talking about genocide here or shredding the constitution. We're talking about sensible and temporary public health policy. But no, I just have to go get my hair done.
I am neutral towards your comment, but I feel you're judging me for my beliefs and opinions, even though you don't know where I come from and what's important for me.
There are several decent ways to keep oneself in good shape for a few months while gyms are closed. Insisting this is a big, important problem for you while also (apparently) not taking advantage of those options means the way you're presenting yourself in your comment doesn't look so great, to put it mildly.
I am taking advantage of the other options, and I am in good shape (well, lean and slender xD). But I can't really replace the gym and the swimming pool with the other options.
Also, I am not concerned how others perceive my beliefs because I know what works for me, so to each their own.
How did "do three things to prevent mass death" (distance, mask, wash hands) become "we're all going to die anyways so i'll keep doing whatever I want thank you."
Well, when did "flatten the curve to avoid overwhelming the health system" become "lets close gyms, churches, salons, non-chain stores indefinately but keep open Home Depot, Walmart, liquor stores, pot shops?" Or allowing gatherings for one political viewpoint as ok, but gathering for another as 'selfish and dangerous'?
There's plenty of inconsistency to go around. Add in different perceived risks and different risk tolerances, and what u see as necessary can be seen as narcacism by others.
On the face of it the rules are very simple: stores selling essential goods are allowed to stay open, others must close. So taking each of those:
Home Depot - construction industry is essential
Walmart - groceries are essential
Liquor stores -- groceries are essential
Pot shops -- pharmacies are essential
Gyms -- recreation is not essential
Churches -- culture is not essential
Salons -- culture is not essential
Non-chain stores -- don't have groceries, therefore not essential
Political gatherings -- opposed by the opposite side, nothing has changed
Now you can quibble with some of the categories, but the rules aren't inconsistent. They do just happen to benefit the powerful corporations, surprise surprise.
But specifically we went from "avoid overwhelming the health system" to "let's do the things that stops people from continuing to die". And those things involve avoiding human contact unless it is essential, mask wearing, and social distancing. It's not crazy that our government is asking us to do things that make us less likely to die. You know, unless you're a seatbelt truther.
Narcissism is usually associated with self flattery or egocentricism, as opposed to selfish self-determinism/control (unless in the form of performant displays of anti-lockdown value-signalling).
COVID inspired woke-scolding is more narcissistic.
That's one trait of narcissism, the main one is thinking that the world begins and ends with you. A virus doesn't begin and end with you (by definition), so any argument about self-determinism/control is a red herring meant to distract from what is happening. Wearing a mask isn't about you, the same way that a virus isn't interested in infecting one host. It about communal safety, not yours.
> COVID inspired woke-scolding is more narcissistic.
I have a feeling you would say the same thing with or without a deadly virus ravaging your country.
It's been a while since I've seen mention of actuarial analyses of the pandemic vs lockdowns. Could millions of people with muscle atrophy cause more economic harm?
Lockdown doesn't mean muscle atrophy. You can still do a lot at home even without equipment. Besides, if you want to continue to assume it causes muscle atrophy, then compare a population with muscle atrophy to a population with (likely) permanent organ damage due to a vascular disease (covid).
That's the first article that shows for googling [covid-19 vascular disease].
Basically my understanding of the current understanding is that COVID-19 is better thought of as a disease that can cause blood clots, particularly in several organ systems, particularly in the lungs -- you start getting blood clots in your lungs and consequently can't breathe very well.
Early days yet, but medical professionals are seeing cases of myocarditis that appears to follow COVID. Whether or not this leads to ling-term damage is unknown, but myocarditis isn't generally something you ignore.
Wow, sounds pretty serious. I experienced some of those symptoms in March after a particularly bad respiratory infection. Perhaps it's time to get an antibody test.
Could millions of people with muscle atrophy cause more economic harm?
Who cares? Why is "economic" harm so important?
I'm really tired of people saying "But what about the economy?" I really don't care. I care about my health and the health of my family members. If some artisan dog biscuit company goes out of business, so be it.
The "economy" is just our way of measuring what people do for themselves and others all day. "Some artisan dog biscuit company" is someone else's lifelong work and dream, not just a number in a spreadsheet. Minimizing may make you feel better about selfishly demanding everyone turn their lives off, but it's not an accurate representation of the world.
I'm really tired of people saying "But what about my health?" I really don't care. I care about my job and the businesses of my family members. If some work from home keyboard jockey gets sick because they left their house instead of locking themselves inside, so be it.
If muscle mass or fitness is a concern, work out at home. Or outside. Ride a bike, go for a run, do some pushups. Pick up large rocks. Buy a squat rack or rowing machine. Go climb a mountain.
Access to a gym is absolutely not required to maintain fitness.
This same argument can be made about any infectious disease season. The only difference is a matter of degree. This virus is probably ~5 times as bad as the flu so we should spend ~5 times as much to mitigate the externalities. Not ~500 times as much like we have.
I fear that after this every time there's a bad flu season we will see this same shit again because "think of the most vulnerable among us, you're literally killing them!!"
no the problem is that severe COVID cases take up space in the hospital for a long time, so it's relatively easy for cases to snowball, people to be unable to admitted into hospitals at capacity, and then for lots more unadmitted people to start dying because they can't get treatment. which is what happened in Wuhan.
There are rare long-term side effects from many infectious viruses. Anyone who gets pneumonia from anything will be down for the count for a while, but they'll get better, and that isn't unique to this virus. And myocarditis (the heart inflammation people are talking about) is a side effect of all sorts of viral and even bacterial infections (wikipedia lists basically every common human virus as a cause), it will normally get better on its own, although in rare cases it can cause issues.
None of this is new! This coronavirus is a novel coronavirus, not a magical one. It has effects that are in line with other viral illnesses in humans. It's just a bit more virulent than them. It's a matter of quantitative difference, not qualitative difference.
Possible permanent smell/taste loss? Possibly permanent reduction in lung capacity?
There is a qualitative difference as well. The lingering side effects of the Lyme-causing bacteria is on a level apart from what happens when you get food-poisoned.
You’re right, I’m an economist, not a doctor. So I look at the world in terms of trade offs. And the trade offs western societies have made with this virus are so unlike the trade offs made with any other infectious disease in recent memory that it makes me concerned about what the new trade offs will be going forward.
1. The tradeoffs are mostly US-only, other western societies had the political will to prevent unemployment and evictions. This is not intended to mean "US bad, others good", just that the tradeoffs are not objectively there, but instead mostly a result of societal decisions (e.g. France had 1% lower unemployment in June 2020 than in June 2019 https://countryeconomy.com/unemployment/france?sc=LAB- )
2. Sweden tried this route. They now have the deaths plus the economic fallout (-6% GDP, just like the locked down neighbours Denmark and Norway), mostly due to the international interconnectedness (collapsing supplier chains etc.)
More specifically, other western societies had the political will to prevent all the people who weren't working and were being paid by the government at less than their normal wage from counting towards the unemployment stats - generally some sort of furlough scheme where on paper they were still employed by their original company. Still meant they weren't working, with no guarantee there'd be jobs for them to go back to, but it sure looked better on the stats. (At the cost of arbitrarily screwing over people who for whatever reason couldn't take advantage of furlough and ended up actually-unemployed.)
The US tried something a little like this with forgivable loans to pay businesses' paychecks, but the trouble is they did this after rolling out an unemployment boost that left less well-paid people better off than if they were employed, so it was a little difficult to convince business owners who didn't want their employees to try and murder them in their sleep to take it up.
I wouldn't be so quick to proclaim Europe's victory over this virus. With what's happening in Spain, and now France and Germany, this may be a European "Mission Accomplished" moment in another month.
that's what's known as the "slippery slope" argument. The response to this virus is just so shocking that oh wow, what if this is the new norm? It's not at all. this virus is not "the norm", this is a 100 year event. don't hurt your head on that slope!
Heh, despite the fact that you are being rude to me I'll still answer in good faith because the distinction is important.
If we are spending hundreds of times as much mitigating a virus five times as bad as common illnesses (yes a once in a century event) are we now going to spend dozens of times more money/effort mitigating the flu every year? If yes then we will see lockdowns like this regularly going forward. If no, then the vast majority of the response to COVID is an emotional overreaction, not rational risk mitigation/pricing in externalities.
I will say in mid-March, when things looked quite different based on our limited knowledge of the virus, that the response wasn't entirely unwarranted. But we've known for months that this isn't nearly as bad as feared. It isn't the second coming of smallpox. Yet we still have most of the restrictions and shaming from March, even to this day.
> If we are spending hundreds of times as much mitigating a virus five times as bad as common illnesses
how do you quantify "five times as bad" ? if I run my car into a brick wall at ten miles an hour, vs. 50, one event damages my car the other kills me. is that "five times as bad"?
> are we now going to spend dozens of times more money/effort mitigating the flu every year? If yes then we will see lockdowns like this regularly going forward.
no, why would we? the flu does not overwhelm hospitals [edit: the 2018 flu season comparison is a counterpoint but there is no argument this is anything on the scale what covid has done in places like NYC], cripple the entire medical system such that thousands of patients are left to die in hallways and parking lots, and spread exponentially to kill hundreds of thousands of people within just a few months.
> If no, then the vast majority of the response to COVID is an emotional overreaction, not rational risk mitigation/pricing in externalities.
you have made no argument to support this case.
> I will say in mid-March, when things looked quite different based on our limited knowledge of the virus, that the response wasn't entirely unwarranted.
what exactly "looked quite different" ? the main things that were known in march, e.g. spreads exponentially, r0 is something like 2 or 3 if steps aren't taken, has a 20% hospitalization rate, has a high death rate for those hospitalized which has improved somewaht but that is predicated on the fact that hospitals are availble, are still true.
There were a lot of tweets from people who work in public health about the argument you're making. "If people said we overreacted, then we will know we did our job". That's how it works when you prevent a horrible thing from going out of control. People who for whatever reason don't seem to understand what happened will crow about how unnecessary that was. Can you see how this looks to anyone who is actually trained in this area?
flu may not kill as much as covid or spread as fast as covid but still thousand of people die every year, so somehow that is acceptable without lockdown ?
that's a disingenuous argument because the scale and breadth of the 2018 flu season vs. what covid continues to do are not in the same league at all, by an order of magnitude (see below). there was not a global lockdown for the 2018 flu season I recall, there will not be one for a future flu season of similar magnitude, and the point remains that it's a logical fallacy to suggest the covid lockdown represents the action that would be taken for a 2018-style flu season because there is simply no comparison.
yes because the hospital system was not overwhelmed to the extent that it would be with an unchecked coronavirus. The nationwide overwhelming of hospitals with covid is with lockdowns and mask wearing throughout the nation. if steps had not been taken, the death toll would be approaching the millions by now, not just for covid cases but for all kinds of untreated emergencies.
Without the lockdown the the hospital system are not overwhelmed, at least no more overwhelmed than what happen in the past.
Due to lockdown the hospital are furloughing, lying off nurse, freeze hiring.
Just look at Sweden where they didn't lockdown.
Doesn't mean I say we should not take any step. Step to make vaccine still has to be done, improving treatment still have to be done, increasing health care capacity still have to be done.
> You’re right, I’m an economist, not a doctor. So I look at the world in terms of trade offs. And the trade offs western societies have made with this virus are so unlike the trade offs made with any other infectious disease in recent memory that it makes me concerned about what the new trade offs will be going forward.
I would hope economists would make judgements based on more than aping what happened "in recent memory," but somehow I'm not surprised. IIRC the last time we had major pandemic like this, gathering places were closed (like now), social distancing was done (like now), masks were worn (like now), and some people chafed against the restrictions and decided that it was better to endanger others (like now).
Any flu that clogs your lungs and gives you a fever can give you long term lung or neurological damage. I've seen little to nothing that suggests covid is uniquely dangerous in this regard.
You know what would really cause you to lose muscle? Getting a bad (or even mild) case of COVID.
I'm an athlete myself so I get it. Working out is important. But people are reporting that they are not back to 100% even _months_ after the primary symptoms of COVID are gone. And health professionals are saying that it's very possible to lose things like lung capacity PERMANENTLY. Honestly that scares me more than the idea of being badly sick for 1-2 months. I worked hard to make my lungs strong.
Also, of course, the whole concept of responsibility to our communities in a global pandemic is even more important, but an appeal to self-interest is there as well.
You're just again repeating this same unscientific fearmongering as everyone else.
Yes, there are possible outcomes that are absolutely terrible and potentially even permanent! Nobody is debating this.
However, what we need to have a real and fact-based discussion is that how prevalent these outcomes are, what are they based on, and what groups are most affected.
Then we as a society can come together and choose what the appropriate response is.
Of course this all breaks down when you have a country of 382M people that refuses to even attempt the creation of smaller, more manageable communities.
Something I've learned, which I definitely did not know before covid, is that a lot of common viruses do this kind of damage. Including the ones which cause colds, and definitely more serious viruses like influenza. Heart problems are definitely not unique to coronavirus, and in fact a lot of what we are seeing is par for the course. It's just that this is a very high profile pandemic and there is a huge amount of research being aimed at it.
Yes your last sentence is correct. It is very obvious what's happening, yet even people here on HN (who usually challenge this kind of populist stuff) don't seem to understand it. It's very intriguing.
I don't understand that comment. I keep up to date on the latest scientific papers on the coronavirus pandemic, and the one thing I wouldn't call it is obvious. We repeatedly see things happening that run contrary to what the consensus expectation was. Obviously some of this is due to improvements in our understanding over time, but we are still very much in the dark about how it is currently spreading, who is most likely to suffer fatal or severe consequences, how we best treat the disease, etc.
Charitably, it is neither as bad as we feared nor as innocuous as some hoped, but that was bound to be the case and easily predictable. I don't feel at all confident predicting what comes next, however.
I guess I should have been more explicit. It is very obvious that in early 2020 we barely knew anything about this specific Coronavirus.
The fact that we are still following the same guidelines as we did in February makes it pretty obvious that governments are not really working with the new data currently coming out, but instead still trying to scramble to put a cap on any possible downside COVID has.
To put it in other terms, most world governments (and majority of their people in some cases!) are thinking like this currently, in terms of "amount of danger"
potential, currently unknown, negative outcomes related to COVID > millions without jobs, tens of millions stuck inside getting cabin fever and whole industries collapsing.
> The fact that we are still following the same guidelines as we did in February makes it pretty obvious that governments are not really working with the new data currently coming out, but instead still trying to scramble to put a cap on any possible downside COVID has.
Who is "we"? My state went from "no one go anywhere, disinfect surfaces" to "wear masks everywhere, avoid groups of people indoors". We've gone through a lot of phases as more information became available, and while things are very much not yet back to normal, many restrictions have been lifted once it was apparent they weren't needed.
I wouldn't take the 1/1000 chance, but even then. It's not an all or nothing choice.
It's more like:
- X/1000 chance for people who go to the gym, get sick, lose health permanently, probably infect others
- 0/1000 chance of the same if you stay away from the gym and try to do some sort of similar workout at home, even if it's not ideal. Body weight exercises are great by the way
Who cares if X is 1 or 999? Why would anyone choose the first option?
Because I am already taking a 1/500 chance of death in the next year and I can't do anything about that, so when probabilities get small enough I stop caring. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
If I'm squatting 250 lbs normally, body weight isn't going to do jack for me.
People choose the first option because they weigh risks differently. The risk of permanent health damage as a result of coronavirus disease in my age bracket with no pre-existing conditions is effectively nil.
Many people simply aren't willing to indefinitely maintain a lifestyle that would protect them from the coronavirus, so the risk is already priced in. It's distributed over the times that I visit my family, my roommate visits his friends, I go to the cafe, etc.
Yeah, as a former powerlifter I would really be missing my gym buddies if I was really into it now.
For now it seems like indoor gyms as we know them today are probably a bad idea. Hopefully due to a combination of better mitigations in the gym itself (sure put the squat rack in a giant bubble), decline in case counts, etc means the day where going back is not too far away (fingers crossed).
Do you plan to avoid COVID forever? Do you believe you will never get it? Do you expect to isolate yourself until an effective and reliable vaccine is available to you? How long can you do that for? Are you most concerned with not getting it yourself, or with reducing the overall death count by not overloading the healthcare system?
I'm most concerned with my family not getting it. I have no interest in attending another funeral for a child in my life and I would not want my kids to grow up missing a parent. We miss friends dearly.
I'm hoping that the early vaccine trials go well and are approved. There is promising progress there but who knows.
There seem to be other nasty long term effects that are mostly unknown.
The idea that kids don't get or spread covid is not supported by evidence. They seem to get less symptoms, but there isn't enough evidence to say they don't get or spread it. Some studies suggest they are more likely to get and spread it, but there isn't enough to make strong statements yet
You can maintain a very healthy body using only body weight exercises, with practically no weights at all from the comfort of your home. With youtube and the like, you have access to near infinite workouts as well. Not having access to a gym is not a sufficient reason to be out of shape.
Once you start training weighted exercises it's very difficult to get similar workouts with bodyweight. If I'm squatting 250lb it's going to be tough to simulate that with my bodyweight and I'm not likely to be able to load the reps the same way.
One-legged bodyweight squats + whatever heavy things you have available (e.g. bottles of water) in a backpack should be difficult enough. If you care about "functional strength" then it's arguably superior than barbell squats. And one-handed pushups are good substitute for benchpress.
Those are great ways to get hurt mostly. If you're doing one legged squats you're going to tire out stabilizers before your glutes get a good workout. One handed pushups similar issue.
Great if that's what you want but not a replacement for proper weighted squats.
You can work on your form, by slowing down the squat, using whatever weights you do have on hand (a broom handle or "yoke" with 5 gallon buckets filled with water/sand), dumbbells, kettle bells or weighted vest. You can also work on your fast twitch muscles and explosivity by jumping from a squat. Doing squats with a weight in only one hand also improves your core technique. Now is a great time to work on your neuromuscular fitness which will improve your lifts tremendously.
Yea the workouts obviously won't be similar because you're not going to simulate that weight properly without a squat rack, but there are plenty of workouts you can do that will have similar positive effects on your body mechanics.
The exceptions are sport specific exercises which require certain movements that may require certain equipment.
Gyms have benefits, sure, but he's responding to someone treating it as either go to the gym or get no exercise. He's pointing out alternatives. They don't need to be as good to be relevant.
The fact that push-ups exist refutes the false dilemma. The fact that gyms exist does not refute the idea that you can stay fit without a gym.
> The last couple months has done more damage than good to me.
Me too. I live alone, and for the first 110 days of lockdown in the UK, I saw another human being that I know in person for 6 of those days. The toll that has taken on my mental health is huge.
Combine the lack of human interaction with the loss of everything that has value to me and my life outside of my job: restaurants, museums, sporting events, theatres, gyms, sporting activities, all of these things disappeared overnight, and most of them haven't returned still.
Instead, I've taken up volunteering (while still holding down a 60hr/week job) with local charities, helping those in the community around me who are more vulnerable and more in need than I am. Mostly helping out with food deliveries, which makes for good exercise, but often collecting drugs for them and delivering to them, which can make for decent cardio if the distances are right.
TL;DR: There are ways to achieve the goals you need for yourself, and simultaneously helping others rather than endangering them.
EDIT: watching the count on this post is amusing. Maybe it's worth being explicitly clear: despite the volunteering work, I am absolutely still depressed, and will continue to be until I can make meaningful changes to improve my life. There's no magic bullet when you sacrifice the things that give you meaning.
It's not amusing; it's reflective of the fact that severe alcohol withdrawal can kill, or easily put you in the ICU, which isn't great when we need ICU capacity.
> In the Western world about 15% of people have problems with alcoholism at some point in time. About half of people with alcoholism will develop withdrawal symptoms upon reducing their use, with four percent developing severe symptoms. Among those with severe symptoms up to 15% die.
I was really surprised to hear about alcohol bans in eg South Africa for this reason. It’s a terrible idea and dangerous for no real gain that I can discern.
Working out in a mask is very tough. It is a difficulty enhancement. I dance in a mask at a pace similar to jogging and that is hard enough. I wouldn't want to try to do a full workout that way. That would be the first order to get ignored.
Is there a way to work out safely? Complete air replacement and surface disinfection. That can realistically only be done outdoors.
As a club kid who refuses to grow up, I bring my professional club lights and a mobile DJ speaker to the park to dance with a friend. She has a much harder time coping with isolation and it helps her. It is a system for events of 50-100 people, so it is loud enough to mimic the experience. I would actually be OK with us both wearing Bluetooth headphones like my JBL BT Reflect Mini, which are robust enough to wear while dancing and doing crazy head moves, but a club speaker sounds different because of the reverb from the surrounding environment.
We still wear masks despite not touching and being completely outdoors. We do not need to according to laws of physics, but not doing so would contribute to the attitude that masks are optional. They are not optional. As much as I trust my friend and she trusts me, there is no way to know with certainty we can not infect each other after a day of interaction with other people.
One way to setup a safe workout would be to use the gym's parking lot and set it up with gym flooring and 10x10' canopies. Portable patio heaters would keep the person warm when warm weather ends. They are expensive, but one way to solve that would be to setup a solar array and use electric heaters.
Another friend who is a Zumba instructor is hosting classes in a park's parking lot. That works for her and her students and it is safe.
> Working out in a mask is very tough. It is a difficulty enhancement.
I bike 25km every day wearing a full P100 respirator, the kind with replaceable cartridges that catch organic vapors, like for spraying paint.
It’s fine, and not a significant burden. People complaining about masks are just that: complaining. Respirators are built for doing hard, strenuous labor in hazardous conditions. If demo crews can manage it, so can anyone else.
Working out in a mask gives you insane lung capacity. It's like high altitude training. At first I seriously struggled, now I'm biking 30+ miles in my mask and I expect to PR like crazy the day I get my covid vaccine, whenever that may be.
We had a high school swim coach that really bought into this. He would make the kids train on cardio equipment in the gym for a couple hours, only you would be wearing a snorkel with a piece of tape over the hole, with only a pin prick through the tape to breathe through. We've owned our division in state swim meets for about 2 decades now. Work your lungs.
Ironically, months of lockdown away from gym and weight gain has increased my risk for lethal covid outcomes. Though looking forward to cheap surplus sales.
I can certainly understand people’s need to continue their exercise routine. This is for their physical and mental health. As long as they keep the precaution in place, whip down and clean up and social distancing.
For me I’ve canceled the gym membership and taking up biking. It has been working out great. Discovered a lot more biking trials around the area. Got plenty of sua shine and vitamin D along the way.
I'm curious to check my ethics. I'm in Colorado. Currently climbing gyms are open, limited capacity, with masks. I'm currently planning for winter. My gut says in 6-8 weeks with schools + flu season starting there's good chance of either shut down of gyms again or just too much risk for me.
So I've been looking for private commercial space. I already have a personal wall need to move it indoors.
My question is what others think of the ethics of expanding from just myself to trying to get 5-10 people onboard with a 501c7 social group to lower costs and build more walls in a private space. Only allow one person in at a time - mask-less (or closed loop groups for instance me and my climbing partner are in a 2 person closed loop).
I'm currently trying to look at the last order to see if that's legal.
but now with this thread I'm questioning the ethics and curious what others think. Besides the obvious unequal privilege that I can afford this luxury.
Related, I really don't understand why gyms in my city haven't turned to renting out their equipment. I know people that bought dumbbells, over paid, and picked from really limited inventory. Meanwhile, the gym a block away has a giant pile of weights not being used, and has basically no revenue right now.
They won't make enough on rentals to break even on the amount that people steal and never return. A single 45 lb plate costs $60-$100 with covid pricing.
Personally, I'm less concerned about gyms. People in gyms are adults and can theoretically stay 6-ft away from each other and wear a mask. I've seen high-impact classes like kick-boxing being held outside in parks for better airflow. Driving activities underground however, has well understood unintended consequences of causing violence and disregard of health rules, as we know from prohibition in the 20's and the drug war since the 70's.
The uniquely American issue, is with bars and clubs being closed. In the land of big houses, everyone knows someone with a bar in their backyard or basement. Keeping bars closed now, when everyone is fed up with the social isolation (sorry, Zoom doesn't cut it) just means actual underground speakeasies serving alcohol aka house parties. Where dedicated gym rats aren't drinking alcohol at the same time they're at the gym (it hurts gainz), and are can be more responsible for their actions, people on alcohol can't. I'm not saying that to excuse drunk people's behaviors, what I'm saying is that trying to get drunk people to stay 6-ft apart and wear a mask is an exercise in futility.
Since people are gonna be drinking anyway, especially during a pandemic, and a recession, and in the face of great uncertainty, and on the cusp of a presidential election, what's needed is to open the bars, but require patrons scan-in via phone app using the bluetooth-based contact tracing (PEPP-PT), or else face suspension of liquor license. By making it required at bars, you get around some of the privacy issues since those that don't want to, can just not go to bars. Using bluetooth-based tracing gets around issues of using GPS-based tracking, and also helps amplify the effectiveness of an under-funded contact tracing corps by providing a technology based solution.
This is imperfect, but perfect is the enemy of the good, and even done imperfectly, contact tracing can very successfully drive Re (the local effective value calculated from a diseases' R0) down below 1, at which point the disease doesn't continue to spread and the pandemic can be controlled. For a disease like COVID-19 with an R0 of 2.5, it doesn't take too much to drive it down.
I'm no fan of lockdowns, but comparisons to the prohibition of alcohol in America are appeals to political mythology. You may argue it didn't work to the extent some have wanted it to, but it did produce "positive" results on almost every notable metric other than political satisfaction. By some measures alcohol consumption only recovered to pre-prohibition levels in the 1960s.
In the big scheme of things it's just not a good example of anything relating to effectiveness of government imposed restrictions.
I had been going to legal gyms for two months. The intense focus on hygiene seems to be working since none of the 600 outbreaks inmy state has been traced to a gym.
The responses here are precious. Gym dudes: "leave me alone." Non gym dudes: "you're going to kill us all by doing deadlifts." FWIIW in the interests of full disclosure, I am thoroughly a gym dude, but have my own equipment and a terrible case of misanthropy, so I've been working out at home for years.
I wonder how the paranoiacs who think deadlifters are going to cause mass death mentally deal with the facts on the ground in Sweden. They seem to be doing fine; all they did was prevent large gatherings; no masks, no shut down, yet 4x better covid death rate than, say, Massachusetts, which is still locked down as if we're in the black death. Nobody ever talks about Sweden, I guess because they appear to have gotten it right, making fools of most of the rest of the West.
Your source (by some dimwit reporter) still says 4x as many Massholes as Swedes died per capita; thank you, drive through. It is otherwise a non-sequitur.
I know of one "secret gym" that's extremely well ventilated, everyone wears masks, and everyone is socially distanced. They don't do things that require spots, etc. I think it's pretty safe. Only 6 people are allowed in at one time.
That's fascinating, and I had wondered if it were happening. I guess I was right. Due to the timing of the last 6 months or so, I haven't been making it to the gym as much. I started focussing more on mountain biking, I broke my hand, then my clavicle, traveled to Japan, and then the pandemic showed up.
With all this more focused time during lockdown, I was tempted to buy my own equipment and toyed with the idea of letting some friends come use it, it got me thinking about the legalities and liabilities of that kind of thing.
If we go back into lockdown, I'll definitely be buying my own equipment. I do powerlifting, so bodyweight and a few dumbells don't really cut it.
There is a suprising amount of work you can do with resistance bands. That used to be the powerlifting equipment of choice before dumbbells and barbells became fashionable in the bodybuilding community a century ago. You can hit everything olympic lifting hits. Great reading here, along with tons of examples of workouts and movements:
In ancient Greek army, they had a death penalty for losing your shield, the same as desertion. There was no such penalty for losing your helmet or armor. Why ? Because they fought in a phalanx, and a soldier losing his shield endangered not only himself, but also his companion on the left.
Fun fact: all Greek troops were named after the type of shield they used.
Jesus. All HN covid threads read like teenage internet trolls have taken over. No sources for claims and full of outrageus anecdotes. In my country its usually people living off the state that comment like this.
We haven't evolved to constantly evaluate our actions against things we cannot see right in front of us (in this case a virus). Nothing actually happening during this pandemic is surprising in the least.
You think a disease with a case fatality rate of like 0.05 (probably like 0.01 for 20-30 somethings) would actually going put evolutionary pressure on anything? These people are looking at the risks and making rational decisions that its not worth shutting down your life.
"Manifestation" or "tangibility" are generally really big problems in terms of getting people to understand what they cannot immediately see, hear, touch, or smell. Or what their worldviews have not prepared rhem to see, or worse, trained them the specifically not see.
This turns up in many places in technology --- bugs, design flaws, architectural errors, implicit assumptions, security issues, unintended consequences, UI affordances, algorithmic biases, data corruption, ...
A typoogy of various forms of such cognitive biases would be interesting. Too small, far, distant in time, transparent, big, diffuse, etc., etc.
See also Robert K. Merton's Manifest and Latent Functions.
>Christina learned that these swole, maskless bros were refugees from big chain gyms like the YMCA and Planet Fitness
Seriously doubt anybody described as a 'swole bro' is coming from Planet Fitness. They're pretty heavy on the anti-bro advertising [0] and their business model is more about finding tons of people sign up that rarely actually work out in their gym.
Anyone supporting Gyms or high-traffic transmission areas right now are clearly narcissistic. If this getting called out is an affront to you, you may need to visit your physician to get diagnosed.
The people denying the pandemic (or calling it a "plandemic"), or refusing to wear masks because muh freedoms, or protesting lockdowns are going to be laughed at in history classes for decades. You are unbelievably ignorant, selfish and arrogant. You are the reason this stuff needs to be enforced in the first place, because too many people completely lack empathy and critical thinking ability.
What do you think about Sweden, then? They seem to be done with this with no lockdown and a small amount of death (accounting for old people who would have died this year anyway, statistically)
>What do you think you're accomplishing by posting easily debunked misinformation?
The data on Sweden is clear, they are down to near zero covid deaths per day in a country of over 10 million people. Can't see how that can be debunked.
And how are they significantly worse? They are living normal lives.
Also, if something is 'easily debunked' then just do it.
You're just picking who to compare Sweden to. There's no reason why we should only compare it to neighboring countries.
Sweden had no lockdown and did about as bad as worst performers many of which had a heavy lockdown. This is absolutely a significant piece of information. If we had a no lockdown country getting the absolute worst result perhaps we could settle the debate. Would UK or some of the other bad performers be worse off without a lockdown? We don't know. There is no example to point to.
If UK could have had no lockdown and replicated Sweden's result then the lockdown was a huge waste.
I'm not saying that you cannot compare it to Norway, nor am I necessarily saying that Sweden couldn't get a better result with a lockdown. But even if that were to be true it doesn't mean Sweden isn't an interesting data point casting doubt on the effectiveness of lockdowns in some countries.
This seems incredibly dangerous. Are the speakeasy gyms requiring negative COVID tests? Are they doing temperature screenings upon entry? How diligently are they sanitizing equipment? How well ventilated are these various areas?
Why are people ignoring all of these risks, what kind of threat model do they have?
I'd guess the threat model is something like: relatively low local disease prevalence rate, the likelihood that infected people show up to workout is lower than other activities like office-work, and relatively low likelihood of personal adverse outcomes in someone healthy enough to be going to an underground gym.
Further, there are major benefits to psychological state, social/emotional state, mental acuity, health, and maintenance/progression of physical capacity.
I'd love to see you try and add all that up in micromorts of personal risk and show me that it's actually a bad rational decision. I suspect it would be very marginal for your argument at best, and most likely neutral or positive.
That's all to say it's probably rational decision making, though certainly selfish thinking.
>I'd love to see you try and add all that up in micromorts of personal risk and show me that it's actually a bad rational decision.
On an individual level, I have no doubt you're right. The health benefits from exercise would definitely outweigh the risk of COVID-19 (assuming the individual's not over 65 or has a majorly risky health condition).
But this is a pandemic, so decisions are made on the community level. The disease spreads. Healthy people don't live in separate cities from those at risk. Even if everyone is careful, mistakes happen: an unexpected sneeze, unconsciously rubbing your eyes, getting caught in a crowd. We're trying to minimize the number of mistakes (especially the more likely ones).
That's not too say whatever policy is current in your area is right. But if you think things can be done safely, consider reaching out to your representatives with a plan backed up by medical research. I know my state desperately wants to reopen businesses; the government doesn't benefit from closures.
It's not true to say that Covid is only risky for the elderly or folks with pre-existing conditions. Many many young people have been hospitalized and even those who caught the disease and were not hospitalized are finding they have long term health impacts such as difficulty breathing, strokes, and heart problems that can lead to sudden death.
It's extremely dangerous to give people the impression that the disease is only serious for those over 65 or with pre-existing conditions. That sort of impression is why people are engaging in risky behavior such as going to gyms.
The ugly truth is that a large fraction of the population just doesn't care about at-risk people (that is to say, they may care to some degree, but not nearly to the same degree as proponents of quarantine). It's pretty gross.
This isn't new in any way; just look at how we've treated at-risk populations previously (e.g., homeless folks, the foster system, etc). The difference with the pandemic is that there was a rapid increase in who's considered "at risk".
I actually emphatically support the decisions of local public health authorities, OP just asked for some idea of what the people going to gyms were thinking.
> I'd love to see you try and add all that up in micromorts of personal risk and show me that it's actually a bad rational decision.
Isn't that the whole reason public health is necessary? Because a large group of individuals making rational health decisions alone can, collectively, make poor health decisions for the group? It's kind of like polluting or littering. Yes it's perfectly rational for me to throw my trash on the ground because it's cheap and convenient but when everyone acts "rationally" then everyone is worse off compared to when we coordinate.
I'd argue that the insistence of public policy to impose such draconian limitations on individual rights has a larger negative health and well being outcomes, but we have made the cost collectively born so we are all miserable, broke, and in bad health to prevent to save a marginal number of people who were already in poor health status. We are practicing socialism but applied to health and wellbeing, with the same results as economic socialism... everyone is miserable.
You say that like, if governments didn't impose restrictions, a new and highly contagious virus that can send you or loved ones to the ICU would not make people avoid crowds, spend less, and overall feel miserable.
> the insistence of public policy to impose such draconian limitations on individual rights
If people gave a damn about other people, they would be following best practices voluntarily, which would make policy limitations a moot point. But they do not, so here we are.
I'd like to believe that the scientific and medical authorities who are being consulted by local and state leadership have done exactly that calculation... and that result was states mandating that these businesses be shut down.
Why do randos think they understand the threat model better than the CDC and state medical authorities?
> Why do randos think they understand the threat model better than the CDC and state medical authorities?
This is HN. We get a post on at least a weekly basis to the effect of: medications shouldn’t require prescriptions, anyone with an internet connection and a couple brain cells can manage their own care.
HN: home of “no one in management can possibly understand the technical complexity of software” and “who needs doctors, obviously I can easily understand that other enormous technical field.”
One, OP's question was about the threat model of underground-gym-goers not the CDC and state/local medical authorities.
Two, public health authorities don't do "exactly that calculation" because they are looking at interventions on the population level. Their job is to mandate things that would be individually irrational for the collective good. They have their own calculus about what the acceptable trade-offs are, that I'd suspect ultimately relates to the same monetary value of a human life that FEMA uses, but I'm not sure. I generally trust them to do their job correctly though.
Within a certain range on the lower end, definitely. Above that range, I disagree strongly. People generally know when there's "a bad cold/flu going around" or "a stomach bug" or w/e. There's some good intuitive reasoning there, but I'd agree that they aren't very good at it within a regime where it's prevalent enough to matter, but not quite prevalent enough to see/feel out intuitively.
By my rough calculations, for a 35M, going to the gym during Covid for an hour a day, for 160 straight days (so 6.67 days of gym time), can be expected to cut one's life expectancy by about 10 days.
Odds of dying this year: 0.002138 [1]. Odds of dying this year if they get Covid: 0.00271 (~n*1.3) [2]
Odds of contracting Covid over 160 days if going to gym: 60% Odds of contracting Covid if not going to Gym: 43% (assuming 10 people at the gym each time, 1 hour workout durations, odds of someone at Gym having it in any one session at .025%, and odds of catching it 20% at gym).
Now what about the negative second order affects of spreading it to others? I did not model those, but I think at this point there could be a compelling case that not catching it now might be net harmful to the folks at high risk, since they would need to remain in lockdown if there remains a large number of people around who are not immune.
Aren't the cofactors for COVID death highly unusual for gym exercisers? High BMI, low cardio health stats, diabetes, high blood pressure... Going to the gym is my only prevention for those cofactors...
Looking at the stats I'm more likely to spread the disease if I go to the gym, but much less likely to personally die of the disease if I stay healthy by going to the gym.
Complicating the situation is due to work and food delivery situation, I can't actually spread the disease to anyone at risk because they just aren't in my life.
They are doing exactly zero of those things, because of prohibition. That's the whole point of the article -- if you prohibit something, it'll happen anyway but quality will go down. A much better approach would be to require the things you mentioned (like my area did) by law instead of a blanket ban.
In the US, roughly 150 per 1m people catch covid per day. Infection fatality for 20-29 is about 7/100,000. For 365 days, that is about a 1/million chance of dying of covid (for a 20 something year old) .
For context[1]:
For similar ages, the suicide rate is 200/ million.
Deaths from unintentional injury is 600/ million
Deaths from heart disease is roughly 100/ million
When I put this into a threat model, I should put about 1000X more effort into these areas. A 10% reduction in risk of heart disease is an equal trade-off with +900% chance of contracting covid.
For the sake of an example, allow me to assume (a) there are 10 people in your class, (b) each of you has an average of one other "risky outing" (shop at a store, one meeting with coworkers, visit another household) a day, and (c) each outing has a 0.5% risk of transmission assuming the boxer's infected.
If anyone in your group gets infected, there's a good chance you'll all catch it (you seem to acknowledge this). In that case, in one day of infectiousness, there's a 0.995^10 = 95.111% chance nobody else gets infected. So a 4.889% chance of infecting. That's low.
But if you all remain infectious for 14 days, there's now only a (0.995^10)^14 = 49.571% chance nobody new is infected. So the odds are your group spread it to at least one other person. And this process will probably repeat through those new infections.
Obviously, these numbers are arbitrary. It's a terrible model for an infectious disease. My point is to show how probability is very hard to reason about. It's unrealistic to expect average citizens to do this.
Thanks for putting this thought experiment into numbers, even if they are arbitrary. It really helps to form some estimation of a mental model, and shows how goddamn complex all of this is.
I think there are quite a number of safe(r) things you're doing which speakeasies don't seem to be - you're meeting in an outdoor space with a continuous group you know. Based on other anecdotes it seems that there are people more or less literally renting out their garages and basements to strangers.
You don't have to go if you don't want to. Surely your indignation would be better directed at employers, schools and others who are requiring in-person attendance.
Except that these people go there and then go home and spread it to their family and other friends. They go to grocery stores and other locations and touch things or cough/sneeze it in to the air. It's never about one person's individual choice.
> Surely your indignation would be better directed at employers, schools and others who are requiring in-person attendance.
Yes this deserves it as well but that does not negate the concerns
It seems terribly unfair to call it profound ignorance. As you say, it's a values difference. If you remember learning about "individualism", that's what it means; it's the idea that the collective doesn't have unbounded authority to tell individuals what to do.
> It makes me sad seeing a community I’d otherwise regard as intelligent being so profoundly ignorant
I feel the same about religion, so AFAIK this has always been so - move along, nothing to see here.
Except religion has been around long enough to excuse itself from the obvious, or a least to bare its fangs at anyone thinking of commenting on the emperor's new clothes..
Are you implying that the people going to these speakeasy gyms are then self-quarantining and not interacting with people who did not go to the gym? Because if not, then this is a non sequitur of a response.
> Surely your indignation would be better directed at employers, schools and others who are requiring in-person attendance.
Except OP is not about employers, schools and others.
Interacting with other people is a two-way street. If you are afraid someone across from you might have been to one of these gyms, then walk away from them.
I'm okay with this answer as long as the people who go to the gym aren't allowed in the grocery store, bank, on public transport.... Because I do have to go there whether I want to or not. Give any gym-goer a 2 week temporary tattoo on their forehead so I know to avoid them. Then we're cool.
They're not constructing a complex threat model and deciding that the hedonic value of gym attendance outweighs the disease risk. They're just going to the gym because they decided they'd like to. The article's parallel to alcohol prohibition is exactly on point; there was a famous policy where the government ordered industrial alcohol to include increasingly strong poisions, but consumers kept on drinking it anyway, because they weren't doing a risk-benefit analysis in the first place.
Most commenters here seem to implicitly accept the framing of the discussion around stay-at-home orders as some sort of tradeoff between different values – for example, saving lives versus protecting the economy, or freedom versus safety. But has anyone considered whether stay-at-home orders have actually saved lives overall?
The UN estimated [0][1] that between 83 million and 132 million people will go hungry around the world because of anti-COVID measures. Some of these people will die from starvation or malnutrition. Some of them will die from other preventable health problems later in life.
According to the Stop TB Partnership, a three-month lockdown followed by a gradual return to normal over 10 months could result in an additional 6.3 million cases of tuberculosis and 1.4 million deaths between 2020 and 2025. [2][3]
It's also plausible that lockdowns could lead to hundreds of thousands of additional deaths from each of HIV/AIDS [4], malaria [5], and several other diseases, though I'm not as confident about these numbers.
I am sure someone will be tempted to respond with some variant on "we could have avoided these deaths by tuning the stay-at-home restrictions more competently." Of course, that's true; but the point is that we didn't. We never do. Historically, every society that has tried to eliminate "non-essential" jobs through central planning has eventually found that even when the planners operate with the very best of intentions, they still make mistakes. Dealing with one problem causes a cascade of other subtle changes with real, harmful consequences, which are harder to mitigate when people aren't allowed to freely choose how to spend their own resources. Meanwhile, problems that are judged to be less important are forgotten, because planners can only focus on a limited number of tasks at one time. Human societies are incredibly complex. Trying to manage them from the top is like developing software using the waterfall model: it would work perfectly with perfect planning, but we all know how that works out in real life.
On a personal level: a relative passed away from cancer recently. Cancer isn't a good way to die at the best of times; and I'll be honest, she almost certainly would not have survived even with better medical treatment. But if hospitals hadn't shut down "elective" and "non-essential" care, she could have gone through a lot less pain and suffering. I am not trying to use this as a bludgeon – I understand there are also a lot of people who have suffered greatly from COVID, and of course, we should make policy based on what's best for everyone rather than a small number of anecdotes. But when I read comments saying things like "I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people"... let's just say that I don't know how to respond to that without severely violating HN guidelines.
Daily reminder that we have the technology to get society back to normal with cheap 15 minute ‘good-enough’ covid tests that can be manufactured now (millions per day). All we need is competent leadership in government to say ‘go’
Virtually all the people who died of covid were fat[1]. If the military forced everyone to exercise (and diet, but that's harder to mandate than exercising) it would have been much more effective than forcing everyone to wear masks. (Masks are still good though.) Most of us are going to get covid even if we stay inside all day (I got it twice) so this should be a wake-up call to be prepared to survive it. Or don't, stay overweight and choke on your own blood if you want--that's "freedom".
In the cited article, the only statistic I see on weight specifically is that 74% of critically ill UK patients were overweight or obese, which makes it a risk factor but not the be all and end all, given what fraction of the whole pop fits that category (~65%).
It also says that 99% of deaths in Italy were from patients with pre-existing conditions, which would included weight related and non-weight related ones.
Regardless of COVID, maintaining a healthy weight is probably one of more important lifestyle changes one can make to reduce risk of overall mortality.
The summary statistic leaves out the effect of age. Most of the non-overweight people who died were old. The main reason you'd die of covid if you are young is being overweight or obese:
> Patients with BMIs greater than 40 kg/m2 had higher death rates overall, and those with BMIs greater than 45 kg/m2 had a risk ratio of 4.18. Most strikingly, however, those younger than 60 years had increased risk ratios of 12 to 17 versus 1 to 3 if they were older; high BMI increased risk in men more than in women.
> Virtually all the people who died of covid were fat[1].
Your source doesn't support that. Viewing each of the separate country-specific statistics as being generally applicable you could conclude:
* A majority were obese, but a significant minority were not.
* Virtually all had some preexisting condition that COVID aggravated, and some (but not all) of those were preexisting conditions for which obesity is a risk factor.
> If the military forced everyone to exercise (and diet, but that's harder to mandate than exercising) it would have been much more effective than forcing everyone to wear masks.
That's not at all supported by any evidence which you've presented. For one thing you seem to have not considered in dreaming this up, people (especially, but not exclusively, of advanced age) with the kind of preexisting conditions involved often can't just pick up an exercise routine even if doing so before developing the conditions could have prevented them.
> Most of us are going to get covid even if we stay inside all day (I got it twice)
While there is some concern about whether getting it gives you long-term immunity, AFAICT there is no confirmed reinfection and most indicated potential reinfections are more likely to involve at least one testing error rather than an actual reinfection.
> Virtually all the people who died of covid were fat
This is true, but mostly because virtually all people are overweight or obese. At least, the link you provided cited that 74% of critically ill Covid patients in the UK were obese, while it turns out that 64% of the UK is already in the overweight/obese category anyway.
Masks are still probably a more effective way to prevent critical illness from covid than exercise.
We don't wear masks for the cold and flu season because the threshold of dying from them is very high. In an ideal world where everyone were fit with strong immune systems, the threshold of dying from covid would be more similar to that of the flu--you wouldn't need to wear a mask for the same reason you wouldn't need to wear one for the cold and flu season.
(That said I'm not against masks. We should have been wearing them for cold and flu seasons this whole time.)
It's causation, not just correlation. If you want an explanation, here's what physicians say:
> Then, there is Newton's second law: force = mass × acceleration. It requires more muscle force to displace the diaphragm downward when a substantial fat mass lies below it. Abdominal obesity also makes it more difficult to breathe in a prone position that is favored to improve ventilation in patients with COVID-19. Among more specific mechanisms is expression of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 protein in adipose tissue. This is the docking protein for SARS-CoV-2 to enter a cell, and fat has higher levels than the lungs and so may serve as a viral refuge and replication site, prolonging virus shedding.
I'm not saying that there isn't a causal mechanism. I'm saying that you can't infer anything at all about the effect size from the proportion of people who die who are obese.
Wow with these comments. You going to the gym is not saving the economy. Yes, we can't shut everything down but you'd think the article was about shutting down grocery stores or the stock market. And by not doing your part, your whole community could be stunted for 2 years. Also congratulations for not caring about a 1 in 200 chance of death (pretty high by the way) because you're healthy and passing on the risk to some vulnerable person (probably your parents or a school teacher) with a 1 in 10 chance of death. You might be helping your personal economy, but you're not helping "the economy".
- give up a few luxuries especially if they involve heavy breathing or eating in close quarters.
- Work from home if you can
- Socially distance
- Wear a mask when you can't socially distance
- Go to work if you need to. Don't go to other people's work if you don't need to
- Support temporary benefits to your fellow citizens as you helpfully avoid going to their place of work.
> congratulations for not caring about a 1 in 200 chance of death (pretty high by the way) because you're healthy and passing on the risk to some vulnerable person (probably your parents or a school teacher) with a 1 in 10 chance of death.
This is wrong and misleading. You're quoting the average fatality rate for "healthy" people, but the distribution doesn't look like that at all. Then, you cherrypick 10% out of nowhere for "parents and school teachers". 10% is the rate for people in their 80s.
Real data: "[t]he estimated IFR is close to zero for younger adults but rises exponentially with age, reaching about 0.3% for ages 50-59, 1.3% for ages 60-69, 4% for ages 70-79, 10% for ages 80-89."[1]
True, but that's not as if death was the only bad outcome. Not that we can even pretend to know the long-term effects yet, but anecdotally it seems that some people are already experiencing them, which include lung scarring and neurological symptoms.
yep. many people have been sick since March, but saving lives is the priority, so we know almost nothing about "long-haulers." plus the hospitalization rate is a lot higher than the death rate, and hospitalization often means ICU for a month plus.
a realistic calculation of risk should be looking at your risk of dying, your risk of serious illness, your risk of permanent illness and/or long-term effects, _and_ your risk of medical bankruptcy. one dude got a bill for a million dollars when he finally was able to leave the ICU.
For example, in a recent study, 78% percent of recovered people had heart changes visible on a CMRI weeks after recovery.
COVID-19 is going to have a long tail...
[1] Outcomes of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Patients Recently Recovered From Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), Puntmann et al, JAMA Cardiology, 2020
This isn’t really substantially different than regular influenza. Indeed a very high proportion of flu patients show the exact same CMRI heart changes.[1]
Yet we know that while heart attack risk is elevated for a few weeks after a bout of flu, it reverts to baseline for virtually all otherwise healthy patients.
The myth of long-term COVID heart damage is, as of the evidence yet, media scaremongering. We have no reason to believe that COVID behaves any different than any other common respiratory infection in this regard.
As somebody young and fit, I am not really scared of dying if I catch covid, but losing my taste or getting my lungs scarred (especially since my respiratory system is not that great to begin with) is definitely preoccupying.
The top level comment is likely to also be wrong with regard to complication incidence of "healthy" people and "teachers and parents" vs average population. Granted, nobody really knows, and it's all anecdotal.
It's interesting that people are only applying this level of precaution to covid when (if they were consistent) they would probably apply it all the time to every novel viral strain. If the far-off chance of covid causing some crazy complications down the line is enough to warrant partially shutting down civilization, then we should probably all just live in hermetically sealed bubbles on account of the possibility of the hundreds of more obscure but (cumulatively) more dangerous viruses out there.
This is a general reply, not only to the parent comment. I’m indeed cherry-picking though I didn’t carefully check the numbers. My point is we need to sacrifice some of the more trivial things and make minimal efforts to ride this out, and by not changing our lifestyles, we are passing the risk on to others, some of whom may be vulnerable and some of whom don’t have any option to not go to work (for example) to reduce their risk. You are making their risk higher by going to the gym and potentially contracting the virus, infecting your kids, and sending them to school where one of the teachers maybe has an underlying condition (for example).
I’m not arguing for total lockdown. I’m arguing for avoiding the more risky activities that involve heavy breathing in close quarters so total lockdown can be avoided. Local governments mostly know this, and have set policies accordingly. In general they should do a better job of compensating businesses in the short term since it’s not the gym owner’s fault (for example) that his business happens to have been risky right now.
I don’t think it’s good behavior to go out of your way to circumvent a public health policy based on a personal risk tolerance.
And how long are you expecting people to avoid the more risky activities? What are the exit criteria?
Obviously there is not going to be a total lockdown in the the US no matter what happens. Regardless of the potential benefits, that option isn't even remotely politically feasible. People simply won't comply, and there aren't enough police to enforce it.
Look at Asian cities, they generally set criteria, and open and close activities in stages based on the criteria. I live in Tokyo and without much of a lockdown (I’d argue for a bit more action myself), things are OK. Right now bars are supposed to close at 10pm and people are going out less. But they’re still going to work (with masks).
Obviously the political situation and what’s feasible is different, but I hope restrictions on group sizes and a small number of activities is not infeasible. They are not “lockdown”, they are the way to avoid lockdown.
That's a low effort comment which doesn't address the issue. Which specific criteria do you think we ought to follow? Why are bars considered safe but gyms aren't? Are Tokyo residents wearing masks in bars?
Again there is no political possibility of a future strict lockdown in the US. So for better or worse it has already been avoided.
> And how long are you expecting people to avoid the more risky activities? What are the exit criteria?
There are some obvious ones, like: no new cases in the city/county reported in 14 days.
For some reason, it seems people thought this would take a month or two, and then everything will be back to normal. But it wouldn't. Two months is a ramp-up period, a default if you do nothing. "Flattening the curve" measures were always going to extend the partial lockdowns until late this year. We knew that in March.
That is a ridiculous standard, totally unachievable in any populous region. It's simple numbers. There are 10M people in Los Angeles county alone and we will never see zero new cases there per 14 days in our lifetimes no matter what we do. So what are exit criteria that would actually be possible in the real world?
> we need to sacrifice some of the more trivial things
The "more trivial things" like normal social interaction, employment, and healthy exercise?
I've never seen a more pointed example of most people's abject inability to perform utilitarian reasoning than this pandemic. If you think causing at least tens of thousands of suicides since the start of the lockdowns, impoverishing millions of people for years to come, and drastically reducing almost everyone's quality of life is a reasonable tradeoff for buying (on expectation) an extra few months of life for geriatrics, you are not rational.
> I've never seen a more pointed example of most people's abject inability to perform utilitarian reasoning than this pandemic.
Yep, me neither. If more people could, we wouldn't have this problem, because people who could would stay home. And going to the gym is indeed one of the "more trivial things".
I suppose the problem is that it's hard to impress on people the seriousness of the situation. If instead of a virus, you had a madman or enemy soldiers going through the street and shooting every two hundredth person at random (even with a heavy bias towards the elderly), everyone would stay home and keep crying the government needs to do more.
I’ve done the risk analysis of the health effects of the virus on myself and people I care about and decided that the negligible marginal increase in risk of death or serious injury is not even close to sufficient to justify becoming a shut-in.
If a single-basis-point-scale increase in annual death rates is enough to make you “stay home”, you should never go outside in the first place.
On expectation, my marginal increase in risk of death from depression from becoming a shut-in is higher than the marginal increase in risk of death from contracting covid.
Did you miss the part where I said "risk analysis of the health effects of the virus on myself and people I care about"?
I've included everyone I come into contact with. The risk to them is insufficient to justify me becoming a hermit. If they have a vastly different risk profile from me, they'll become a hermit of their own accord and I don't have to worry about them catching it from me.
> The primary problem with this disease is the asymptomatic spread.
If that's the "primary problem", then it's probably not something to worry about, don't you think?
Based strictly on estimated unemployment/suicide causal relationship. Actual numbers are probably higher than I've estimated due to depression caused by non-unemployment factors like social isolation. As I understand, this comports with the recent rise in e.g. opiate deaths.
That’s still whole numbers for anyone over 60, and significant numbers still for anyone below it.
Have you ever seriously contemplated death? If you have, those numbers don’t seem very good, not at all.
Not to mention these are stats for DEATH. Meaning these are the worst case scenario. Dead. The chances of getting seriously ill, like major suffering, are much higher. Would you want to experience that? Would you wish that on others in your community?
Sure, but how many of those people would have died from the normal flu?
I know this is a morbid topic, but it gets to a fundamental truth. How valuable is a human life? Is it worth significantly damaging the future of the young through economic depression and increased social isolation and mental illness to extend the life old old people by a year, 5 years?
There is no easy solution. We can hibernate as much of the non-essential economy with lock-downs and mandate the wearing of masks. But this, will extend the economic hardship we are under, which will put further economic strain on young people, who now have had to contend with the great recession and now likely a depression. We can do like sweeden and try and isolate and protect the vulnerable, and keep the economy open, or we can do nothing. Each of these choices has trade-offs in terms of economic hardship and lives. Not just the lives of people who get COVID, but those who commit suicide due to social isolation, economic hardship, and other factors related to COVID.
American's can't have this discussion in a mature manner because it has been poisoned by politics.
> Sure, but how many of those people would have died from the normal flu?
I’ve been comparing flu stats for Australia. 2019 a BAD flu season was over 400 deaths. A NORMAL season is roughly 150 deaths. I think 146 in 2018. 2020 has 36 deaths.
Melbourne deaths peaked at 25 for a single day. The current outbreak in VIC totally blows past the flu death rate for the entire country.
Total COVID deaths in Australia (450) already matches a bad flu season in a “locked down” environment and we still have 5 months to go for 2020.
Thankfully in Australia it’s possible to make mask wearing mandatory.
This far in I don't think I can believe that people that are still clamoring to compare covid to regular seasonal flus are arguing in good faith. Sharing data with them isn't going to do much, although I guess it might stop some others from believing bullshit.
In this forum we should assume good faith nonetheless.
The flu certainly makes for a better comparison for discussion's sake than something like smallpox or the bubonic plague. Let's not forget the Spanish flu was also a flu.
When you look at the demographic curve of fatalities it's similar to the flu: it's not deadly to the young and healthy, but it is to the old and sick.
When you look at overall mortality it's not similar to the flu. It's worse. Covid is a bigger killer, with a major reason being the lack of population resistance, vaccination, treatment protocols etc.
I think most discussion misses this point, it is similar in some ways and not in others.
In my view a rational and evidence-based approach would have focused on protecting vulnerable populations from day one. Such policies received little emphasis. Instead, we panicked and implemented measures that destroyed the jobs of healthy people who were living paycheck to paycheck. It's hard to imagine a worse response than one that fails to focus on the core problem and injures millions in the process.
I agree with all of that. My point wasn't to say that COVID was the same as the flu, rather that predominantly the people who are dying, are the same people who get killed off by the flu.
Saying its just a flu, also discounts the potential life long impacts of a COVID infection, which appears to damage the hearts and lungs of some people who survived.
The broader point is, that there is no one right answer, all answers cause pain and suffering for different groups. To dumb it down to a black and white response does a massive disservice.
That's with the flu having been around the year before, the year before that, one before that, etc. In any given year the most likely people to die from flu have already died from flu, and the others have already had the flu when they were young and otherwise healthy.
Can't really make a comparison with a long standing disease when covid19 is still doing its first rounds.
Look, I actually agree with what the actions the Australian Government have taken. I do think its important to play devils advocate, to properly evaluate the decisions that are being made.
What makes you think "playing devils advocate" during a global pandemic when there's already a lot of malicious misinformation going around is at all a good idea?
How many more quarter millions of souls is a sufficient amount to sacrifice on behalf of gym fetishists?
(I was planning a return to the gym following an involuntary multi-year lapse this past January. On advising my doctor I was delaying plans, their first response was to dismiss my concerns as germophobic. They've since apologised.)
I doubt your sincerity. This is obviously different from the seasonal flu.
However, I do want to address the young and increased social isolation and mental illness. Took my toddler for an annual checkup recently and asked about all this as he's been out of daycare since March and had concerns about development.
The pediatrician's answer, which I found compelling was: this is a big deal, and it's going to have an impact, and therefore we should be a little lax to help create some comfort around the house. That said, all the psychologists in the world are looking at this and starting to work on the impact and how we get kids back to "normal" or ease the harm this has on them. There is going to be expertise and guidance on this.
Of course, that likely doesn't apply to the anti-science crowd.
No shit. I was being a bit flippant. No doubt it is different from a regular flu. My point was, there are no good options, only the least bad option. All choices we make have negative effects for different groups. Is death for someone who has lived a full life really the worst option?
I am remarkably lucky. I am fairly resilient and being stuck working from home hasn't negatively impacted my mental health. I've been promoted during the crisis. I am financially secure.
Not everyone is like me. Many people have suffered horribly due to the crisis, becoming unemployed, unable to see friends, they don't have their usual coping mechanisms. My point was, how we choose to deal with this is a choice, each choice has consequences. Currently we are saving older lives, at the expense of damaging the futures of younger generations. Is this the right balance? I don't know. I don't claim to know. But as a society, this is what we need to answer, how valuable is each human life.
Should we choose harsh lockdowns to extend the lives of older people by x years on average? What is the cost in economic and mental health harm to younger generations? How do we balance these needs?
These are the discussions we should be having, instead of decrying anyone who disagrees with the harshest of measures as a witch.
That’s about a month’s worth of deaths. The economic impact would be roughly that of everybody taking a really long vacation. We are past that. And it’s completely besides the point—-it does not seem like that is the calculus going into our policy decisions here in August.
Looking at current number of deaths as the outcome for the decision to open stuff up only makes sense if you think we would have seen the same infection rate.
If the infection rate is high enough and fast enough, we surpass the healthcare system's capacity to help with hospitalization, and then we see a large increase in the mortality rate for those infected, as some of those with bad, but not fatal infections that recovered in the hospital don't recover out of the hospital. The faster the spread, the worse (higher) that number is.
> The economic impact would be roughly that of everybody taking a really long vacation.
People come back from vacations. The economic impact would be more like those people all quit at the same time.
> it does not seem like that is the calculus going into our policy decisions here in August.
It is. They're looking at worst case scenarios for COVID-19, and how likely they are, compared to worst case scenarios for the economy, and how likely they are.
Worst case for the economy is a depression, which may take years or decades to recover from, but the workers are still there, still trained, and we can hopefully get them back to work with stimulus, even if it takes a long time.
Worst case for COVID-19 is that instead of hundreds of thousands of dead, we see millions of dead. What's the economic impact of one of every 50 or 100 families loses a parent, and how that affects they flexibility and ability to recover from financial bumps? What's the impact to Apple or Google if a high level exec that's spears a division dies (what's happened at Apple since Job died, and he had plenty of time to groom a successor)? What about the 20 employees of small business that was struggling but surviving when the owner dies? The economic impact of people actually disappearing forever is sometimes equivalent of the cost and time to train a replacement (which is generally multiple months of salary for any non-trivial position), and that's when it can actually be replaced adequately.
Even if you want to completely ignore the humanitarian aspect of it, there's good economic reason to not want people to die, and why locking things down, while economically disastrous, maybe still be less economically disastrous than NOT doing so.
I think you are arguing against a man made out of straw. People do not want to live like this, regardless of economics or theory. You can shout argument after argument; it won’t change that more and more people are going to mingle.
> People do not want to live like this, regardless of economics or theory.
That's fine. People are going to do what they're going to do. I'm not quite willing to let them do it behind nonsense arguments and justifications though.
If someone's unwilling to give up going to the gym, so be it. When they couch it (as some have here) as them actually doing it for the benefit of everyone else by helping the economy, I'm going to loudly and vehemently call bullshit.
If they say they just aren't willing to change and don't care about any of the data, well as long as they actually know the data, then I'll have nothing more to discuss with them.
What I'm saying is that if someone shows they are completely unwilling to either look at the facts, or just don't care that their actions have such an outsized negative impact, what can I do? They are literally holding everyone else hostage because they don't want to change. That's not negotiation, and the only "policy" that will work for them is "whatever they want".
That said, I don't think this is how people are. I think people are living in a deep cognitive dissonance and refusing to see the facts, not acknowledging them and saying they don't care.
That's not a policy problem, that a problem of educating people that do not want to be educated. Should the rest of the populace just shift our views away from reality so people that don't want to face it can get a better deal out of some policy? That won't lead to an acceptable outcome either, when the policy in question is about public safety.
To clarify, your original argument was made in bad faith. You don't like sacrificing for the greater good, so you'll make arguments to appear substantive, but really, you want to 'mingle'.
The original idea was that there was no way that policy was being informed by the trade-off described by parent, so it was a moot point. I think I was not clear enough.
You could and probably should argue that Americans should take the flu far more seriously as well. Think of the amount of people that come to work/the store sick, don't get their flu shots (yes I understand it's not 100% effective), don't wear masks, don't take even the most basic precautions.
Preventable deaths.
> American's can't have this discussion in a mature manner because it has been poisoned by politics.
I would say it's deeper than that. American society has been poisoned by individuality to the point where no one wants to do anything to help one another if it doesn't benefit them. It feels there's no concept of civic sense or societal good. Everyone just wants to do whatever they want, regardless of the consequences.
Ask me to inconvenience myself for someone else? Fuck you buddy I got mine /s
This is abhorrently flawed logic. These mortality rates are a sum of your chances of dying from literally everything that can kill you, including cancer and heart disease. We're talking about a disease right here right now that has similar rates of mortality, that is currently active and being spread in our communities, could have even larger long term mortality rates and yet people are making excuses of why it's ok to possible expose other people so that they can avoid working out in their living room.
I guess you’re really careful about the flu and driving, and wear a helmet when crossing the street too?
How about, if you’re worried, stay home, stay in. If you’re not worried, go out. Let’s not impinge on freedoms of any groups. Not just little freedoms. Pretty basic ones like, freedoms of assembly.
For the vulnerable people, in some ways it would be better if everyone else went on as normal. Let the virus burn through the population as fast as possible, then you can go out again!
But there's a few big problems here:
a) As we've seen, some of the most vulnerable people are in situations where "staying in" without letting the virus in is very difficult. This will be worse the more widespread in the wider community?
b) Even if the vulnerable can perfectly protect themselves, this assumes a very selfish calculus of unconcern for everyone else. If your hospitals fall past the tipping point in a "get it over with ASAP" yolo policy, people not only die faster than in a world where there's never a vaccine or effictive treatment, more of them die too due to reduced ability to treat.
c) Who's gonna pay for all the non-wealthy vulnerable people to stay home? Especially in cases where they need to be more isolated, such as those with healthy roommates who will be acting normally, so they need to relocate too? I haven't seen anyone proposing answers to this in the states like TX or GA.
So something like a million+ people dying if we let this run without intervention - because our ability to control transmission is pretty limited even with dramatic measures - out of the US population only matters if they distribution is balanced age-wise?
Economic-cost-wise, why is this cost the one that gets people so riled up?
Is it because it also comes with personal inconvenience, and so much of the other ways we spend money fighting death - or trying to extract revenge for death like after 9/11 - doesn't?
Driving, for instance - the government makes us spend a lot more to have safer cars, but other than styles and types of car available as a result, we don't really get impacted by it. It just makes the cars more expensive, and few people care.
Or maybe we're just bad at dealing with adversity without having someone to blame? So we go reaching for "bad guys"?
> our ability to control transmission is pretty limited even with dramatic measures
The ability of politicians to control transmission by making decrees, even dramatic ones, is limited, yes.
The ability of ordinary people to control transmission by taking obvious common sense precautions is not. And those obvious common sense precautions should include, yes, not engaging in activities that have a high risk of transmission.
Age is not the only thing that could raise an individual's risk factor to 10%. There is no reason why individuals not in their 80s might, for some other reason, be in a category with higher mortality risk. Honestly, we don't know that much about this disease yet - but we do know that the outcomes for different people can be very diverse.
One problem with age-based stats like this is that it gives the impression that the way to think about risk is along the lines of russian roulette: when someone gets infected, the great actuary in the sky rolls a D100, consults the tables, and if their roll is good, they don't die.
But what if the die was already rolled for some individuals? What if, say, one in 100 people carry a genetic risk factor that means that if they get COVID, they have a much higher risk of dying - regardless of their age? That hypothesis is also compatible with the statistical data we are looking at.
You could also consider, what if some people have particular predisposition to become a superspreader and infect many more people?
If the population contains individuals for whom their individual outcome risk, or their potential impact on other people, is significantly above the average, then by reducing the spread of the disease we reduce the number of such people who ever get infected. You can prevent the D100 having to be rolled for as many people, including people who need to roll much higher to survive.
Well precisely, it doesn’t actually matter. I’ll let you into a secret: there isn’t even really a dice.
The point is more to get people to think about the difference between aggregate average mortality, vs the individual prognosis of one unlucky COVID patient.
This winds up being a trolley-problem kind of reframing of a moral argument. Philosophically, should you change your behavior between the following two scenarios:
- a group of 100 people all have a 1 in 100 chance of dying of a disease
- a group of 100 people contain one person who will definitely die if they get the disease
?
Does your answer change if you are the one person?
A German study found that even asymptomatic COVID patients have inflammation and damage to heart tissue that’s more than what you’d expect to see. We don’t know whether this will heal or affect the heart long term.
People only looking at fatality rates and so on are taking unknown risks. Many people who have healed from COVID including younger people cannot even climb a flight of stairs. People suffer from fatigue and brain fog months later. Many need lung and kidney transplants. This is not a flu. It causes heavy clotting of the blood and organ damage all over the body which the flu doesn’t.
I urge people to do more research before taking such risks.
> A German study found that even asymptomatic COVID patients have inflammation and damage to heart tissue that’s more than what you’d expect to see. We don’t know whether this will heal or affect the heart long term.
Are you referring to this study[0] and possibly this article[1]?
(In my experience, telling people to “do research” instead of giving them links to primary sources isn’t great if you want to educate people or have a high quality discussion.)
I wish we started a campaign of "you don't have to die for it to suck". I don't know why we're stuck in the dichotomy of death or survival. Permanent damage isn't great either.
There was an article about a quite healthy looking PCA in his 30s who was intubated and essentially wasted away to a startling degree during his COVID convalescence that really drove that home for me.
same reason it's hard to steer an ocean liner. death rates dominated the way people thought and talked about this for months. now it's clearer death rates are obviously not so bad, but permanent damage and months-long recoveries and unclear immunity profile are massive unknowns, but the inertia of the previous narrative still overwhelms the minority trying to course correct. "we're all going to die" "no we're going to be fine" is much easier to latch onto than "it's more complicated than that and we don't really know." especially since most people got sick of lockdown and many are in grave economic danger because of it. people are doing a mental calculus of "well I'll probably be fine so I think we should open back up" and change their arguments to suit the conclusion they've decided on
this is unnecessary fear mongering without any actual statistics/studies linked. i've seen those studies linked, and they're definitely concerning, but using words like "many" without any backing is just harmful and just creates more paranoia/panic.
highly recommend /r/COVID19 (stay away from /r/coronavirus) for well moderated discussions that aren't politicized/sensationalist and are based on research/science/numbers.
SARS has had 15+ years to be studied at this point. COVID has been around for half a year. Nobody knows anything so talking about it one way or another is dangerous. Too optimistic and you have people thinking its no big deal, and if youre too end of the world about it, then you've got everybody cowering in fear and anxiety about something that has an extremely low chance of happening to them.
Many people doubtless aren't even aware of the possibility of outcomes other than death or recovery, and not discussing the possibility of other outcomes tacitly supports their continued misunderstanding. You seem to be saying "we don't know for sure, so we should stay neutral and not talk imply an outcome either way," but saying nothing is not neutral.
I see your point, and you're not wrong. I guess my main gripe with OP was the way they wrote it. It just screams language used to incite fear amongst uncertainty.
We really need to define "many people". I try to avoid comments and papers like you referenced. They essentially represent the worst case scenario -- it's in the air, unkillable, easy to catch, victims never recover, you may have no symptoms but permanent damage, it makes sane people go crazy etc etc.
How about -- what's the max viral load one can sustain for it not to pass the 1st layer immune system? Is there really a 1st and 2nd layer? Can I resist it without getting antibodies? How much more effective is a KN95 / N95 mask in terms of viral load vs the others?
And why don't we have more high powered venting fans and permanent outside events and require building to open their windows or remove their walls in climates where that'd work?
I don’t have a clear number for many. But the hospitalization rate is 1-2 %. And if we assume that half of them have long term symptoms thats around 1 %.
You can do one thing to reduce your viral load. Wear a mask. N95 will do better than a surgical mask. But even mask wearing seems controversial. These things are really hard to study so you need to err on the side of caution.
Keep in mind that the current being on the safe side cautions have devastating effects on the vulnerable populations outside of the comfort of US and EU homes.
"6,000 children could die every day as a direct consequence of the pandemic, that’s one child every 15 seconds, if we don’t act now."
https://www.unicef.ie/stories/impact-covid-19-children/
This isn't true. The US threw away vast amount of food because of supply chain disruption, and a lot of raw production was interrupted. The US is a massive food exporter.
If the price of soybean, or wheat, or pork goes up 15% internationally as a result of US supply disruptions, that doesn't starve any Americans, but it absolutely causes deaths in Yemen, which is already in the middle of a famine.
You’ll be happy to know that soybean and swine prices are at 10 year lows and wheat is up slightly but lower than a year ago. [1,2,3]
I think your concern is real and well placed. When the economy is frozen for a pandemic, you have a demand shock and a supply shock, what happens to prices? I think this was genuinely unclear early in the pandemic. Interesting additional details here [4,5]
I travelled all over Europe past two months and I must say Europe is quite laxed. And there cases haven’t really gone up. Pretty much every outdoor cafes in Europe were open with a few exceptions and I didn’t see much difference other than people wearing masks and social distancing between tables.
I think in US everything is polarized and politicized. To the point that wearing masks is somehow considered against freedom.
I believe health officials have some blames to share. They still have not come clean for their initial mask guidelines that was blatantly wrong. I think health authorities will have long time to regain trusts in US.
I also feel we don’t quite understand the transmission mechanism fully yet. It’s airborne, at least we know that part but the clusters in nursing homes and indoor parties also indicate there is some mechanisms in play when indoor.
Europe has twice the population of the United States.
Yet despite this, United States has 4 TIMES the cases per day.
Europe can relax because they worked hard in the beginning to get everything under control. The US never did that, most states (like my home state of Texas) did a half-assed closing for 3 weeks, so the numbers never really got under control.
It's not that clear that a lockdown helps. NY closed the earliest in the US but was the hardest hit nevertheless. It has now mostly reopened and cases aren't going up. Chances are we may have reached herd immunity there.
I have seen recently that serology tests in Italy have shown the same outcome for people who were locked down than essential workers who were not locked down (and mortality stats in the UK told a similar story a couple of months ago).
Also the evolution of deaths in Sweden followed the same shape and timing than all the other european countries who locked down, suggesting the peak had more to do with the natural evolution of the infection than as a result of a lockdown.
And as far as I know, the WHO does not support lockdowns.
I suppose things like how well care homes were protected probably mattered a lot more.
Second or third earliest, and there was early community spread in NY, when CA was locking down and NY was ignoring it for a week or two. And it's home to the densest city. And I think it's uncontroversial that CA lockdowns helped.
>>It's not that clear that a lockdown helps. NY closed the earliest in the US but was the hardest hit nevertheless. It has now mostly reopened and cases aren't going up. Chances are we may have reached herd immunity there.
No, this is absolutely wrong, every single sentence. Lockdowns definitely help. New York was hit hardest because, despite closing the earliest, they still closed way too late. Cuomo resisted calls from his health experts for almost three weeks. By the time he gave the order, there were 5,000 daily cases reported and the virus was practically out of control.
"Majority of New Yorkers were not infected" is not enough to say they don't have herd immunity.
Wasn't there a study showing 40% of people have generic coronavirus anti-bodies from prior colds and it is believed that these help? Though the extent might not be known.
I’ve heard the evidence is mixed for lockdown but I believe most of that evidence is very fuzzy comparing various (poor) degrees of compliance from ok to bad. Didn’t NYC peak almost exactly 2-3 weeks after the lockdown just as would have been expected? And at the extreme of everyone isolated in their apartment 24 hours a day the virus could not really spread.
Thank you !
I am all for the lockdown. I am all for wearing masks. Contact tracing is great and d=should be done more rigorously. I am all for proven methods working well for a disease that is both more and less well-understood than we think.
However, amidst genuinely useful health policy, we also have a seriously large amount of security theater. As of this moment, any stance outside "covid is the next coming of the black death" is met with a lot of pushback.
The disease primarily kills and affects older people. We still haven't seen any age specific policy come out of any govt. Close down old age homes. Ensure social distancing at all costs. Let other things come back to normal slowly. It is near impossible for it to spread via surfaces.
WHO has claimed that truly asymptomatic patients (not pre-symptomatic, not making that distinction initially caused push back) patients rarely transmit, and another study found that about 80% of patients in the 10-30 range are asymptomatic.
From my POV, America failed with Covid due to the South, Republicans and many refusing to take basic covid precautions. Shouting at those who are already doing their bit, for not going above and beyond is not going make this any better. People need to stop with purity tests, and directing their misguided anger towards those who are already doing more than enough. This is knowing what we know from countries that have beaten covid.
> As of this moment, any stance outside "covid is the next coming of the black death" is met with a lot of pushback.
Probably because anything less and everyone thinks they're special enough that special health measures don't apply to them.
Not that I'm ordinarily in favor of dramatizing things, but I'm at a loss about how to handle the lot of regular people that I know personally, who aren't capable of nuance and instead will use any excuse to justify ignoring lockdown & social distancing measures. The pictures coming from Italy in March scared the shit out of everyone, but now that we don't see trucks full of bodies in the news on a regular basis, this significant fraction of the population is back to ignoring all safety measures and whining about "covid craze".
On the contrary, I feel this exact mindset has backfired heavily.
The difference between the 'black death hysteria' and the 'invisibility' of the disease on the ground has only emboldened conspiracy theorists, republicans and idiots.
While Trump certainly made it worse, the medical community is to blame as well.
The death estimates (with or without lockdown) from the highly influential ICL study turned out to be completely bogus. The mixed messaging on masks, ventilators and spread via surfaces were all major missteps. The right wing support of Hydroxychloriquine, the disgraced study opposing it printed by respected medical and journalistic outlets and then its eventual disappearance into obscurity was another major blow to the establishment's credibility.
Breeding resentment among those abiding is never a good idea. Adding even more rules for those who aren't is even worse. The moral and practical choices are almost never the same. If the US had found a middle ground lockdown, that everyone was willing to follow, maybe it would have worked out better.
To be clear, if I was a dictator, the lockdown would have been far more severe. But, the US is the country of freedom, where neither the central or the state govts. have much power to enforce anything. They have to negotiate with the citizens,
Covid cases in the US far exceed those of nations where the lockdown requirements (at least those imposed by NE states) are far less stringent. Clearly, the severity of lockdowns was not the problem. It was the complete inability of the experts to get a vast section of the country onboard.
(It is also possible we are arguing the same thing from different points. In Boston, where I stay, I haven't seen a single person without a mask for weeks, everyone socially distances, we have readily available free testing and I getting a bit annoyed at gyms being closed in all capacities despite the per-capita rate being about as low and everyone doing their due diligence.)
> [WHO] said COVID does not transmit from human to human.
Can you put that canard to rest? On January 14th (when virtually nothing was known about this yet), the WHO tweeted (my highlights):
> Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus
So, note:
a) this was very early days, and the understanding was in flux.
b) the WHO didn't itself claim anything about the virus and its transmission, but it reported on a study. The WHO doesn't conduct their own studies. The WHO reports and aggregates information from the member states. Here, these were investigation reports from the Chinese authorities, and that's what they said at the time.
c) these were preliminary studies, not a final conclusion.
d) the claim wasn't that there is no transmission, but that at the time no clear evidence for it had been found.
The tweet was maybe ill-advised, and it didn't age well, but it is by no means indicative of corruption.
That is not to say that the WHO doesn't have major problems. But this tweet is not one of them.
Saw the movie clue a couple months ago. It shocked me how bad WHO reputation was back then. 1985.
Professor Plum works for the WHO. —-
Miss Scarlet :
I hardly think it will enhance your reputation at the U.N. Professor Plum, if it's revealed that you have been implicated not only in adultery with one of your patients, but in her death and the deaths of five other people.
Professor Plum : You don't know what kind of people they have at the U.N., I might go up in their estimation.
It varied and we're seeing more cases in the EU coming out of the lockdown. Hell, NZ went for total elimination and they got more cases (possibly due to freight?)
When this is over, I bet the entire planet will have rates similar to Sweden. My theory is lockdowns delay the inevitable. We should protect the most at risk (95% of fatalities in the US are ages 55+), but we also need to realize there is no way to really stop a virus in circulation.
I wrote a while back about how we just need to come to accept our life expectancy is just lower now:
The reason that the "second wave" (if that's what it truly is) is coming now is because of easing of restrictions more than anything else. This is summer, and Europeans religiously go on vacation during summer.
This second rise in Covid-19 is more related to groups moving between borders, and those borders having had their restrictions lifted, than some "lockdowns don't work" conclusion. If you looked at the data for different EU nations, a few weeks after moderate lockdowns were introduced, the curve did in fact flatten and cases began to plummet. And as countries open up their borders -- and gyms have reopened where I live -- cases go up.
I was in Greece a few weeks ago, and the cases in the entire nation were pretty OK. On the island where I was, it was pretty good. But their borders with their neighbors were open -- Croatia, Albania, etc. -- and the uptick came largely from their neighbors. Now, at least last time I checked, current cases are higher than from the "first" wave.
In total - I'd say it's more a result of the vacation mindset and opening of borders here in Europe that is resulting in this summer uptick than a failure of lockdown measures.
More cases in one region that has gone into [alert level 3](https://covid19.govt.nz/covid-19/alert-system/alert-system-o...) and the rest of the country into level 2. With more cases currently being low double digits active cases (almost all of which are in managed isolation) with single digit new active cases per day which is dropping.
New cases were expected, and planned for. There is active investigation into how the virus got into the community, and efforts to improve the resurgence plan. New cases coming from elimination can't really be compared to "we have community spread, but the cases went down so we are going to open up again".
It takes 5 to 10 years to create a safe and effective vaccine. Look to the 1970s and Swing Flu to see an example of a failed vaccine. It is absolutely insane that anyone is seriously considering we can make a safe vaccine for this in less than a year.
Pharmaceutical companies have never made a successful vaccines for coronaviruses before. I've heard the argument, "Well we have more people working on it." If you hire nine women, you can't make a baby in a month. There is no way, no matter how much money you throw at it, to safely do 5~10 years worth of testing in less than a year.
That was a beautiful strawman, and even one of the replies your comment walked right into it.
There aren't many human coronaviruses circulating to begin with. And they're not dangerous, aside from SARS-CoV-2. Of course there aren't any vaccines for them. Got pretty close on SARS & MERS before they fizzled on their own.
> It takes 5 to 10 years to create a safe and effective vaccine
How long do you think the leading SARS-CoV-2 vaccines have been in development? Years. It's not like they were dreamed up since February.
The SARS vaccine was likely successful. SARS died out and so the vaccine was never fully challenged in a pandemic. But as far as I know antibodies lasted a long time.
How? The whole point of phase 3 clinical trials is long term observation. Have you figured out how to parallelize the passing of time so that it goes by quicker?
A vaccine will be nice to have but it won't be sufficient to eradicate the virus. Some people won't be vaccinated. No vaccine is 100% effective. And there are animal reservoirs; we obviously can't vaccinate wild animals.
We don't get 100% vaccination on any disease, but we have eradicated a few and all but eradicated a bunch. We just need something approximating herd immunity levels. Those who want vaccinations will get them, the rest can slowly add to the total until society as a whole is no longer worried about coronavirus.
If we really get that level of abstention, then maybe it would be a good idea after all to give people who test positive for antibodies some kind of way to prove it.
I don't know but perhaps recent social unrest could have something to do with that?
Europe is getting tired right now, and I'm not talking about economies but about people. You can't lock people for months and expect them to to obey indefinitely. It's unsustainable. It's more reasonable to apply some proportional restrictions than to lock everything down. Eg. limit users of a gym and require disinfection. That's how a legal state should work: effective and proportional restrictions, rest is a human right.
NYC saw substantial social unrest and didn't see any COVID spikes; marches and demonstrations have extended for months and the test positivity rate remains low.
I believe it's the decision not to reopen indoor dining and bars, and to mandate masks, that saved NYC the resurgence that the rest of the country has seen. You absolutely can control COVID even during the current period of social unrest; the US largely chose not to. COVID doesn't seem to like to spread that much during largely masked, outdoor protests. It loves to spread in bars and parties.
School is opening soon, so things will probably get worse, but nevertheless: NYC demonstrates that in an American context, COVID can still be controlled pretty well.
(NYC government has a lot to answer for w/r/t the initial response in March, but that's not the same issue)
Also, the US tests about twice more (per thousand people) vs the rates of testing in Europe, so you should expect at least 2x more cases discovered in the US just by this mere fact.
Most of Europe also has only a "symptoms-based" testing policy, while the US also has an "asymptomic" testing policy.
It's under control from a death perspective. Daily deaths number have been in the 0-20 range for 2+ months in France. The numbers are 100x higher in the US (500-1500/day) over the same period with 5 times the population.
I'm curious about the death rates in the European countries on your WHO link; both France and Spain have clear resurgence in cases but very near zero deaths. Did they actually reduce the morbidity by 100x, or is there some other fundamental difference?
Morbidity has definitely reduced some, both because testing is now covering non-severe cases and because treatment protocols have improved.
But a major factor is that deaths have consistently been a lagging indicator for this disease, both because the progression is quite long and because the most active spreaders tend to be younger and healthier. It's likely that they'll see a matching resurgence in deaths over the next few weeks, as other areas of the world with case surges have consistently seen.
The most vulnerable died and now it's younger, less vulnerable people being infected and we have safety measures to protect the remaining vulnerable populations?
It will be interesting to see the death rate once this is all over. It might be much lower and the initial numbers were skewed by cases in the elderly.
I wonder how well people would respond to another lockdown. As you can see here in the US people are not taking it well. It also appears that Covid cases are spiking in Spain and Germany as well as France.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...
ok? Nothing I said was wrong. I never said "EU", and I never said "EU includes Russia", and I never said "Europe doesnt include Russia".
So what is your point? Just throwing out random facts? And even if you just talk about EU, its still embarassing. EU still has 35% higher population than the US, while the US has 4 times the daily cases.
Higher. US positive rate is 6.9%, Europe is mostly quite a bit lower (Austria 2.5%, Belgium 3%, France 2.4%, Germany 0.9%, Italy 1.9%, Scandinavia <1% except Sweden 3.5%, UK 0.7%) except Spain (7.2%) and Croatia (10.3%).
Most places in Europe locked down early and harder than the US. We got damn close to elimination in many areas. This meant that many countries have been able to broadly reopen their economies. Sadly not every country played ball and it is spreading again.
Poland took some early actions but there are no covid free areas. Infections rates have plateaued but remain on a more or less constant levels. And people are getting upset. It will be really hard to keep them homes during the second wave... Same seems to be true for Czech Ostrava region.
Norway. I agree another strict lockdown will be difficult to enforce. We are looking at a second wave more like the US's ongoing first wave. BUT treatment is seriously improved since March. The IFR is now lower. So that lockdown will still have saved many lives even if the second wave saturates the population.
> They still have not come clean for their initial mask guidelines that was blatantly wrong.
I'm not sure I follow here - what is missing on that front? They have explained why the mask recommendation changed and how they got to their initial recommendation. Not sure how much more they could do there.
What was the explanation again? The only one I've heard is that they lied to us so that medical first responders would have masks available. Which seems strange and unforgivable if true, seeing as how a simple piece of cotton fabric easily made at home (not fleece, as we've learned) would still have been a massive improvement over nothing at all.
> the clusters in nursing homes and indoor parties also indicate there is some mechanisms in play when indoor
One know mechanic is the virus's half life when airborne. We know that the airborne virus can be killed/filtered when there is enough UV light and/or a fine enough particulate air filter in place. In other words, indoor safety can be improved with better filters. Without the proper filtration, HVAC circulation can help circulate the virus, which could be the problem in nursing homes and at parties.
Meanwhile, outdoor air is relatively safe when there is enough distancing as sunlight will take the virus's half life down to 90 seconds at 20% humidity and 70-75 degrees [1]. 20% humidity is pretty low, but the good news is that half life gets even shorter as humidity goes up. Sunlight doesn't even contain the best frequency of UV light to kill the virus, but it's intense enough that it still works fairly well.
Oh really? Croatia couldn't afford to lose the tourist season. As a result the number of cases is skyrocketing. The daily reported cases are much worse now then were at the time of the first lockdown. (see koronavirus.hr for the graph).
That is true. One cannot completely relax. The point is that Asia and Europe has by and large managed, after the big initial outbreaks, to keep R in check with moderate, yet consistent measures (social distancing, no large events, masks).
When people get careless, it flares up, but can (thanks to decent testing meanwhile) typically be suppressed again with regional lockdowns before it gets really bad.
The initial mask guidance was pretty clearly wrong, and there was plenty of griping at the time that they were trying to conserve supplies for front line workers (and rightly so) by spreading FUD. Huge numbers of people were wearing masks back then, against the guidance, because it was pretty obviously better than not wearing one.
In my "bubble" the experts have been proven right, time and again. Again, the mask thing is about the only piece of bad information I can remember being spread.
And yet, all over the internet, 6+ months into this, we have a bunch of people who deliberately misinformed themselves for months, complaining that "the experts have been wrong over and over again".
> It’s airborne, at least we know that part but the clusters in nursing homes and indoor parties also indicate there is some mechanisms in play when indoor.
No, the clusters in nursing homes and indoor parties indicate that airborne transmission is a lot easier when you have high risk people who can't avoid close contact with others, or a lot of people in close contact in a small space, in a closed environment where air is recirculated.
> They still have not come clean for their initial mask guidelines that was blatantly wrong
I don't think they were. There is a 2013 study that shows cloth masks would be ineffective at preventing spread of respiratory illnesses, and posts by UIC Health early on that said they weren't necessary (which they've added a notice to). I wrote about this here:
Fauci originally said masks were not very useful (quite convincingly I might add) and then turned around and said they were. When pressed, he said he was afraid of health professionals running out of PPE. He admitted he made a noble lie. So if he was lying then ... how do we know he's not lying now? How do we know he's not pushing masks because it's causing political strife and fear? After all, his wife has a major role at the NIH for approving emergency drugs and vaccines, and Fauci has vested interested in big pharma. You cannot trust a liar and he admitted to lying directly to us!
In Canada, a man was pepper sprayed at a Tim Horton by a cop for not wearing a mask. Another man refused to wear one, went home, and the cops came to his house. The resulting altercation lead to the cops fatally shooting him. A woman with a medical notice in Melbourne was choked by cops and arrested (granted she did flip them off instead of handing them her note like she should have).
Masks have really torn everyone apart, and have been used as a big source of shame. By mandating them, you break the social contract, and you're asking people to accept certain beliefs, for which there are 10+ scientific papers published on both sides of the fence. They make it harder for us to "see" one another. The hurt our trust because we evolved to depend on facial expressions. And if they don't do very much as far as preventing spread of infection, than they might even cause more harm than good. Am I the only one who sees the normalization of the mask as contributing to those who are rioting?
There are plenty of nations and States within the US without mask mandates and we see similar infection rates based on population density. In the end, I think they'll end up being a political statement. Nothing more, and everything less.
In your writing, you say:
"A study publish in 2013 by the journal of Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness found that cloth masks wouldn’t be effective during an outbreak of a respiratory infection"
However, the study you referenced states the opposite:
"Both masks significantly reduced the number of microorganisms expelled by volunteers, although the
surgical mask was 3 times more effective in blocking transmission than the homemade mask." AND "Conclusion: Our findings suggest that a homemade mask should only be considered as a last resort to prevent droplet transmission from infected individuals, but it would be better than no protection."
"However, these masks would provide the wearers little protection from microorganisms from others persons who are infected with respiratory diseases. As a result, we would not recommend the use of homemade face masks as a method of reducing transmission of infection from aerosols."
No. No, no no. Masks have torn nobody apart. They could have brought us together. One segment of the population embraced politics and decided that masks was the last straw among all of the rules they otherwise accept in their lives, and decided to turn it into a public statement. These people are the ones that have torn everyone apart and ripped up the social contract.
The rest of us are just quietly sucking it up and doing what little we can to improve outcomes for all of society.
> One segment of the population embraced politics and decided that masks was the last straw among all of the rules they otherwise accept in their lives, and decided to turn it into a public statement.
Let's not pretend that there isn't a "wear masks because of politics" segment in the US, too. It's been turned into signalling on both sides, to the detriment of us all.
Why would you wear a mask solely because of politics? It's a good thing to do that has no downsides and it might help other people. It might even help you. Worst case it was a little inconvenience.
In nearly all countries, people simply wear masks when appropriate. The common fight against the virus brings people together, if anything.
To watch the self-destruction of the USA about the "great mask debate" is somewhat baffling.
> There are plenty of nations and States within the US without mask mandates
You need to look at mask wearing, not mask mandates (believe it or not, there are people who wear masks voluntarily); and correct for a whole lot of factors, such as density (compare Hong Kong and Alaska). Then, from what I gather, evidence supports masks.
Spoken like somebody with no skin in the game. Go preach this nonsense to small business owners that have had their livelihoods taken from them and see how long you can keep your head above the parapet.
> Support temporary benefits to your fellow citizens.
What benefits? Support how? Prayers?
Support that small business in your community with your wallet.
> Also congratulations for not caring about a 1 in 200 chance of death.
Where's the data to back up any close to an assertion like this?
You betray an inane non-appreciation of what is actually happening to people economically.
Go out and spend your money, support local businesses.
Edit: To address the claim about the 1/200 rate directly, that number is based on bogus 0.5 - 1% global IFR estimates that haven't been controlled for any demographic group. The IFR for people under 70 is less than 0.1, and likely much, much lower for under 40. And that's not even controlling for anything except age.[1]
Your reference is very good. It is still a pre-print, but the breakdown is very informative. It estimates the IFR (Table 4)
for ages between 0-34 as 0.01% (1 in 10,000), increasing exponentially from there. The estimated IFR for the next age group, people between 34-54, is between 0.04% and 0.2% (1 in 2,500 to 1 in 500), one to two orders of magnitude greater. For people over 85, the IFR is 36.8% (~1 in 3).
Note that the population over 34 is about 50% of the total in the US.
I think people need to dial back a bit and mention that just because you didn't die from infection - doesn't mean you are 100% the way you were pre-infection.
I rarely see mentions too that just because the mortality rate is lower for younger/healthy people - why does that exclude them potentially transmitting it to older folk?
And also possibly getting the most sick you'll ever get in your life, with possible long term effects. Like how exactly does that sound like a reasonable risk to take so you can go to the gym?
I agree completely. It is very easy to dismiss the problem if you are young and you only look at your individual risk. But if you look at society as a whole, the problem is significantly more complicated.
Possibly.. but even this thread I was felt like there were more mentions to just purely stats of IFR by age group as if that was all that matters and they were very active in this thread.
It's good to know it's being brought up when people mention IFR of age groups as if that "proves" we shouldn't worry about it.
An almost meaningless number when not controlled for age, ethnicity, general health etc.
I don't understand how this number can be reasonably used to say anything about basically anything.
From the document you site:
> Many such serological surveys are currently being
> undertaken worldwide [10], and some have thus far
> suggested substantial under-ascertainment of cases, with estimates of IFR converging at approximately 0.5 - 1% [10-12].
But if we follow reference 12, we get the following IFR study from Stockholm[1]:
> Results:
> Age 0–69 Population %: 88.3, IFR: 0.09%
> Age 70+, Population %: 11.7, IFR: 4.29%
Now, which number applies to the vast majority of us? And this is not even controlled for anything but age.
You said there was no data available, and I provided a reference.
The data you cite has a large age group as well (0-69), which has the same problem you describe. See the comment by user kmm below for a reference with a better breakdown of estimated IFR by age groups. The reference also shows how the IFR increases exponentially by age.
If you want to see what number applies to you in particular, then you need an specific breakdown. But if you need to see what is the risk for the population in general, then the estimated total IFR, sampled from that same population, is valuable. Think of individual risk vs systemic risk.
I absolutely agree with your general argument about the context of _average_ mortality rate.
However another aspect that is still very nebulious at this point is post-infection sequelae.
Some of the patients who survived SARS-1 infection (in the SARS 2002-2004 outbreak) had lung scaring, loss of VO2 max, and other pulmonary related disfunction, more than 10 years after infection. [0]
We have seen a lot of pre-print articles discussing SARS-COV2 lung damage, heart and blood vessel damage, peripheral nerve damage, etc.
So if we want to be factual and give people a chance of making an informed decision, then we should also take this aspect in consideration.
At this point, we simply don't know enough about who will be affected and how severely but if take what we learned from SARS-COV1, than it is iresponsible not to disclose that life long injury or damage with _varying_ degrees of intensity across potentially multiple systems is very likely for _some_ of the survivors of SARS-COV2.
My point is an informed decision of not following health authority guidelines (which, at this point of social isolation, I do not judge), should not be reduced to something binomial like survival/death, it's just not that simple (as with most things in life).
I am empathetic to the situation but that's a limited view on "skin". Those who are or have loved ones (colleagues, friends, etc) in the high risk categories also have skin in the game. The 783,000 COVID-19 deaths have permanently affected tens of millions of lives.
There are people with actual skin in the games, you know, their lives. Your business goes under it sucks but you won't die.
Only in America would people legitimately make the argument that it's ok to expose people to risk because people someone is losing money.
Who are you to put a value on my loved ones lives? 1/100 chance, 1/1000 chance, why does any of that matter? Fuck your business, it won't bring my parents back. It won't replace scarred lung tissue in COVID survivors or heal neurological damage.
Preventable death and disability, especially using easy measures like mask wearing and lockdown, should always be preferred over monetary issues.
Modern American values are morally corrupt and disgusting.
You do realize that this "somebody losing money" in the aggregate relates not just to some cliche notion of greedy capitalists getting angry about a few less bags of money. Instead it literally means economic ruin possibly hitting millions of people and less directly causing tens if not hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide, not to mention destroyed families, individual lives and all sorts of psychological and social consequences that go far, far beyond simple greed.
Everything in the world fits along some scale of costs and benefits, and your emotional reaction shouldn't get to ignore that. Your loved ones lives literally do have to balance against the possible consequences to the lives of other people and their own loved ones due to one set of policies vs. another.
By your basic logic of who is anyone to put a value on people's lives due to varying risks of X negative thing happening, we could ban a whole pile of things that people need because somewhere, somehow, these things will indeed cause some people to die. I'm not comparing it to the current severity of COVID, but the flue alone kills tens to hundreds of thousands per year. Does this mean that the whole world should be annually locked down against relatively marginal risks?
The economic debate around the costs of quarantine isn't just about modern american values being "corrupt and disgusting", it's a global consideration that I promise you, billions of people are deeply worrying about in many other countries.. I live moving between two different countries that aren't the United States and which both make many cultural efforts to separate their values from those of Americans, and in both of them, the domestic economic question is causing the same enormous worry and resistance to prolonged quarantines that millions of Americans are also worried about..
I mean, what modern specifically american values? Being able to stay economically solvent? No dude, that's worldwide, and especially among vast parts of the population that don't live under a strong social safety net or with the privilege of enough money or work-from-home opportunities to comfortably sit out the pandemic while criticizing others as greedy.
Filing for bankruptcy will never, ever be equivalent to someone dying from willful negligence because you wanted to keep you business open.
Full stop. There's no argument you could make, it's never going to be equivalent and there's nothing you can say that will balance that out.
I say again, fuck your business. Any size of business. Small family business, large corporation, hot dog stand. If you can't it open, safely, without getting people killed, then you're toast.
Any argument you make is just muddying the waters. This is very clear and unambiguous.
You're either being deliberately emotional and obtuse, or you're trolling, because your argument is so absolutist that it becomes absurd.
It even works against itself, like so, to rephrase your own words: "If you can't shut down the economy and force all normal social activity to cease without getting people killed, then you're toast"
Since you obviously can't claim that your extreme insistence doesn't cause such a level of harm (and it would, directly or indirectly), somebody else could argue just as forcefully against your own idea because it will destroy their lives or lead to the death of some loved one. This is why I mentioned the very important question of balancing harms and outcomes. How can that be so hard to understand on a rational level?
As the other reply said, virtually any activity can be deadly in some context and it's impossible to promise it can't possibly be. This was the case before COVID and it's the case now too. I assume you participated in normal social and economic activity before the pandemic, thus you could also call yourself a hypocrite in cherry picking your starting point for moral outrage.
This logic does not work. You must make a choice to balance risks, because EVERYTHING has risks. Aggregate economic ruin kills people.
By your logic, you shouldn't be able to sell cars, food, practice medicine, go for a walk, run, play sports, do ANYTHING AT ALL because all of these things could injure or kill you or others.
go for a run. you don't have to go to a gym. there are plenty of ways to exercise outside and if you choose not to do them during a pandemic and instead choose to put the lives of others at risk so you can be inside a building, you're a jerk
Social activities are most certainly trivial when compared to a pandemic. Right now my kid’s school is starting remote only primarily because teenagers and early 20’s somethings couldn’t stop going to parties over the summer. Actions have consequences.
I think we see the consequences of a plan that is idealistic and unrealistic. I don’t believe any amount of moral handwringing and shouting is going to make it work.
And we'll all be paying for reduced quality of education of these kids for the rest of our lives. In my son's school, the only requirement to get an "A" last semester was to turn in _any homework at all_, doesn't matter if it's complete or correct - nobody checked. There are now a lot of "A" students.
It’s more like somebody else’s house is on fire, I thought my taxes paid for firefighters, but it turns out those firefighters never bothered to purchase firefighting equipment, so you’re forcing me to spend months putting out other people’s fires using cups of water from my own kitchen while firefighters shout on TV that this is the only possible way things can be.
I think a more accurate analogy is "there's a wildfire and firefighters asked you to conserve water so they can fight it, but some people decided to run their taps 24/7 out of spite and now there's rationing"
I think this is closer, but perhaps needs a slight change. I don't think it's out of spite; it's not like people are taking _more_ risk AFAICT. So maybe something like:
"there's a wildfire and firefighters asked you to limit water use to only drinking water, but some people decided to keep taking long showers, washing dishes, etc"
While on paper that analogy is sound, I feel in practice the asks being made are more extreme and disruptive than short-term water conservation. Others may disagree.
Yeah, and again, the issue isn't that your house is on fire or that there's a wildfire, it's that there's a global pandemic that in absence of any "conservation" measures on your part displays a superlinear growth path - so, yes, the asks being made are much more disruptive, because the event that's occurring is much more dangerous.
You know, your house being on fire doesn't necessarily mean it's going to burn down. Quick response from firefighters can really do a lot to reduce the amount of long-term damage. Sure, you'll have some water damage to deal with, but that's manageable too.
Of course, if you just arse around in the house and don't get out of the goddamn way of the firefighters, it's gonna be a hell of a lot harder to put out the fire and I imagine there's gonna be a lot more damage before all's said and done.
The lock downs were premised upon preventing hospital systems from being overwhelmed. We accomplished that relatively easily, at least in the United States. However, politicians and bureaucrats, unwilling to let a good crisis go to waste, have moved the goalposts so much that now the unspoken policy seems to be that a single infection/death is anathema and that everything should be done to prevent it.
I don't remember giving my elected officials the authority to pursue such extreme policies, especially based on incomplete science. Scientists didn't realize the virus mutated until months after the mutated version was the predominantly spreading version. They waffled on masks and even know there's evidence to suggest that masks can cause more harm because people do not use them properly (they are not washed enough/at all, they are constantly fiddled with (i.e., people touch their face), etc.). Now the latest excuse to extend the lock downs indefinitely is maybe, just maybe a C-19 infection may have long-term negative health externalities.
Mind you, this is all being pushed by the privileged few who have home offices with webcams and fast Internet, food and groceries delivered on a whim, and a Peleton in their home gym. The whole situation is preposterous; it's like we're living in a Monty Python skit.
Your views seem completely detached from reality. The only reason hospital systems were not overwhelmed was due to the continued lockdown + social distancing policies. Every state that went ahead and tried to ignore reality and open up for business rapidly found itself facing the very same issue again with hospitals being near full and in some cases having to turn away patients.
So no, the lockdown isn't some moving goalpost made by politicians gone wild. It is an unfortunate necessity given the abject failure of the federal administration and many states in managing a very serious public health crisis.
^ that was more sensationalism after the death rate started to flatten. The ICU rate then declined after following the death rate. AZ never locked down like CA did.
And pretty much any way you slice it, opening up prematurely resulted in a huge ballooning of cases, deaths and hospital/ICU bed utilization by late June, early July. Perhaps you should look to getting your news from more reliable sources than some dude on twitter with a clear agenda...
It also doesn't help when the Governor of TX was actively hiding data related to hospital bed availability, etc to mask the complete failure of his head-in-the-sand approach to leadership in the time of a major public health emergency [1]
This is not categorically true. E.g., South Dakota is doing fine and never locked down. Same with Wyoming.
Personally, I think the federal administration has done a fine job--most, if not all, of dealing with this situation should be up to the states, not the feds.
Not sure that those states are "doing fine". Per capita, they have a much higher number of cases and the number of cases are also rising in comparison with states like NY and NJ that had things worse but were aggressive in handling the situation [1].
I mean those states are nowhere near the front lines of where COVID would first strike or spread, but the complete apathy to the threat of COVID is going to have consequences. The numbers are already beginning to show that.
> However, politicians and bureaucrats, unwilling to let a good crisis go to waste, have moved the goalposts so much that now the unspoken policy seems to be that a single infection/death is anathema and that everything should be done to prevent it.
Why do you think politicians want to shut things down?
What worldview do you ascribe to people where the view is "wow, this is a great chance to kill off people going to bars and bankrupt our city/state, I've always wanted to do that!"???
It's not strictly because "they want the opposite of what the other guy wants", it's more to drive enough of working class to such desperation that any form of UBI will be widely demanded and then celebrated.
There's no Trump and dem opposition in the rest of the world, yet lockdowns have still been applied. US internal politics really is not the only reason why things happen.
I genuinely don't understand what you're talking about. Preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed was not the only purpose of the lockdowns. The lockdowns have not continued indefinitely. A single infection/death is not anathema and nobody is doing everything to prevent it no matter the cost. If that were true then why has every stay-at-home order been lifted?
How is this different from the TSA for protecting you from terrorists? Or how is this different from the Internet and freedom of speech censorship for protecting you from child porn.
Reality Check: It's not different. People should stop from thinking they have a higher moral ground. Nobody does. On the other hand, on a free society, you should not be able to strip people from their freedom, regardless. People should be able to decide if they want to die from Coronavirus or live a semi-paralyzed life in fear. If you are that concerned, then you can confine yourself at home until everything is over.
Also humanity and evolution has a coping mechanism called natural selection. Helping people through medicine is a good idea but I think we are stretching it too much. In a few hundreds year, everyone will be walking on earth on a space suit.
> Also humanity and evolution has a coping mechanism called natural selection.
So the phrase "Survival of the Fittest" refers in the abstract to the idea that, given fitness function F, members of a species who pass fitness function F will out-survive members who fail function F and then reproduce in higher numbers. But natural selection itself does not define any fitness functions, and makes no mention of a "universal fitness quality" that can be used to judge the fitness of an individual.
The fitness functions that nature comes up with are pretty arbitrary, and don't necessarily align with cultural ideas about merit, fitness or attractiveness. A disease that weakens bones could kill more tall people than short people, a disorder that exploits muscle tissue might affect people who work out more, and a respiratory disease that spreads through the air could take down more sociable people while allowing introverts who stay inside to survive.
The point of modern medicine is that we recognize these many of these fitness functions have no meaning beyond the immediate danger they present. And we can use technology to say "that fitness function is dumb" and remove it from the equation. In doing so, we aren't "unlearning a lesson nature wanted us to learn", we're protecting ourselves from the meaningless and arbitrary rocks that nature occasionally throws at us, and as a result we are increasing human lifespan and quality of life. (And yes, you can quibble about stretching out the suffering of people with terminal cancer, but the millions of children who don't pointlessly die of infant diarrhea each year would probably push back a bit)
> The fitness functions that nature comes up with are pretty arbitrary, and don't necessarily align with cultural ideas about merit, fitness or attractiveness.
nature's fitness is not arbitrary. it's about survival. culturally accepted fitness is arbitrary or linked to a particular evolution era. nature is constantly evolving, so what's fit in this era is not fit in the next.
> the millions of children who don't pointlessly die of infant diarrhea each year would probably push back a bit
I didn't say I don't like medicine. I do and do visit doctors. My main point was about freedom restrictions and how people should have free will to decide.
This isn't really true. Try surviving 40,000 years as a 600 lb diabetic. Yet modern medicine asserts "that fitness function is dumb". In fact, modern medicine asserts __all__ fitness functions are dumb. I can't name a single one where modern medicine says "Yeah, that looks good. Kill them off."
I'm super glad we don't live in that lawless society TBH! One of the best features of government is, IMHO, that we can use it to all agree to abide by having certain "freedoms" inhibited for the greater good where we otherwise wouldn't be able to. Rule of law was a fantastic invention..
> People should be able to decide if they want to die from Coronavirus or live a semi-paralyzed life in fear. If you are that concerned, then you can confine yourself at home until everything is over.
The amount of nuance that you refuse to integrate with your worldview is staggering. I'm shocked to see people write comments like this on Hacker News of all places.
I know this point has been beaten to death already (which contributes to my surprise that you'd even make a claim like this), but have you entirely forgotten about people who rely on younger, more able bodied people AND probably wouldn't survive a full blown coronavirus infection? How do these people "decide if they want to die from Coronavirus"?
> The amount of nuance that you refuse to integrate with your worldview is staggering. I'm shocked to see people write comments like this on Hacker News of all places.
HN asks you to assume a favorable interpretation of the comments. For me it is very clear that the parent meant the whole spectrum, including all nuances by stating the two extremes.
> 1 in 200 chance of death (pretty high by the way)
The fatality rate of a car crash is also about 0.5% [1], but that doesn't prevent us from driving. That means there's a piece of the puzzle missing here, right?
Note that I'm not concluding this means we should go to gyms (or whatever). I'm just pointing out your analysis is missing an important factor, making it faulty/unconvincing.
Edit: Changed the statistic source, because it wasn't measuring what I thought it was measuring. (Which incidentally also gets at the same distinction I was trying to make in my comment.)
You're right, but unfortunately it's beside my point. (I took "chances of dying in a car crash" to mean it was the fatality rate of a car crash, which was wrong.) I was trying to find the chances of dying given you have a car crash, not the chances of being in a car crash and dying. (Which I guess leads to the spoiler: this was the distinction I was trying to make. That you can't just draw a conclusion from only looking at the former, which is what that 1% figure is. You need to look at the chances of getting the disease as well.) I updated the quoted source.
> I was trying to find the chances of dying given you have a car crash, not the chances of being in a car crash and dying.
That seems a weird statistic to seek out, because your conclusion would then be "...and we don't try to avoid getting in car crashes to avoid that 0.5% risk of death". Which is wrong, we do and we should try to avoid crashes.
No, not really. "We" (as in normal people, not e.g. automakers) don't "try to avoid getting in car crashes" to nearly such a degree as with COVID. We live our everyday lives and drive anyway, and doing pretty much whatever we want, except maybe a little slower (due to speed limits), staying within lanes, and while avoiding imminent dangers that pop up on the road. With COVID we're told to stay home and just scrap everything altogether. The response is entirely different, and is not warranted by just comparing those statistics. You need to include the other pieces as well.
> though if you're disputing the specific numbers, you're missing my point
I'll bite ... what is your point? Approximately 30000 people die a year in car accidents a year in the US, COVID has killed 170K in six months. What's the missing piece you are trying to bring to the table?
The probability of dying given you have the disease (/car crash) is not what you need to look at. You need to include the chances of actually getting the disease (/being in a car crash) in the first place, is my point.
Ok. Almost 6 million US car accidents a year, just over 5 million US COVID cases, so car accidents are about 1/5 as lethal as COVID on a per capita basis. Currently the US yearly car crash chance is about the same as a COVID infection. Car crashes are fairly constant, COVID cases are still increasing this year.
I do wonder how the critical injury vs. lasting COVID complications will workout.
Yeah, that's what you need to compare, and that's why just looking at those statistics in isolation doesn't lead to a definite conclusion. But now that we're comparing apples to apples, and see the apples are comparable, we need to move on from them to look at other factors. And like you said, the growth rate is one such huge factor. So, really, I find the growth rate to be a much more compelling argument for treating them differently than the death rate. Though even that isn't airtight: for example, if wearing a mask would practically guarantee you didn't get the virus, and the spread of infection was merely due to people not taking such precautions in social interactions, then that could change everything. And unfortunately I don't know what the actual effectiveness is, so I can't comment on that—though personally I'm skeptical they're as airtight as we'd hope (even skeptical about N95).
All of which is to say: there's a good case to be made, and I'm not even against it, but (a) on the one hand, it's not nearly as open-and-shut as just comparing the (mismatched) statistics in the original comment, and (b) conversely, when there are more compelling arguments, it's so much better to make those arguments instead of comparing apples and oranges.
I think this is comparing the lifetime chance of various causes of death against the chance of death by COVID-19 complications after getting infected. In fact, the original report says it's too soon to know what the actual risk of COVID-19 related death is.
To be fair if we don't control this thing you have a near 100% chance if catching covid at some point in the next few months. Assuming we have an effective vaccine in 6 months you would then have a near 0% chance of catching covid again. This works out to the lifetime chance of death being the IFR. So between 1/1000 to 1/100 (depending on which study for IFR you look at).
If we don't develop an effective vaccine then given immunity seems to be temporary (as with other coronaviruses) most of us will catch this every year so a really high proportion of us will die of covid eventually (where eventually is in many years).
> To be fair if we don't control this thing you have a near 100% chance if catching covid at some point in the next few months.
By "near 100% chance" here do you mean the fraction of the population getting the disease, or the likelihood of getting the disease even if you take the appropriate precautions? Or to put it another way: imagine 1% of the population taking all the ideal precautions for the next year (and only going outside fro obvious necessities, like food/groceries/etc.). Will they also have a near 100% chance of getting it in your model? Or does 100% merely refer to # of infections / population?
The rate at which this thing grows took London from a fraction of a perentage to 5-10% infected at the same time in about 4 weeks. It could have easily hit 30-50% of people infected at the same time in another 2 weeks without the lockdown. Unless you literally shut in and careful wash and disinfect all your deliveries during the period when your delivery driver has a 1 in approx 5 chance of being an asymptomatic (but infectious carrier) you are nearly certain to catch it.
My memory is kind of fading w.r.t. what exactly happened in London, but I seem to recall their plan was pretty much explicitly "let's embrace COVID so we can get herd immunity"?
Herd immunity was England's plan initially - until they ran the numbers.
Then they looked at a new model and realised that if they achieved herd immunity, the predicted number of people who would die, this summer, was going to be massive.
They also realised that some of those deaths would be due to the healthcare system being unable to treat a lot of people, making the number who would die even larger, and avoidably so. Presumably hospitals turning critical patients away would also be socially & politically disastrous. This started the "flatten the curve" strategy.
So they rapidly did a U-turn towards progressively increasing lockdowns, and now decreasing restrictions.
Now with a bit more thinking behind us, we also realise herd immunity might not even work as predicted, because it's not clear what are the long term effects of the virus, including immunity and ability to be infectious to others after new exposure despite having had the virus before.
Like in the USA, people aren't complying with much consistency, and it looks obvious that many people, mostly younger, don't care to protect others. The emerging anecdotes and data about long term damage when surviving do not seem to bother them either.
Nonetheless, it looks like the strategy has made a large difference to the outcome compared with what early models predicted if there were no restrictions.
And now with the emerging data about long term harm (including evidence suggesting asymptomatic carriers who don't know they had it but may have sustained organ damage affecting them in future), we can be confident the strategy, by reducing the numbers of people who get it, will have made a difference to more people than previously thought.
This doesn't stop a few people from saying that the lockdown was unnecessary because there were only X deaths and the temporary new hospitals were not much used, when X is because of lockdown (and is larger than the models predicted). There are people with no brain apparently.
It seemed that way (I'm not certain it wasn't just incompetence in realising how quickly it was spreading). Then they did strict lockdown and worked hard to shield the most vulnerable. The shielding was poorly executed - like everything the UK government do.
They had 'spread the curve' type measures (stay home if sick and 'use common sense' etc) for 10 days. The infection rates carried on doubling during that time.
London is a perfect example of how quickly this thing can spread in a modern city and how many people get sick at once. The only reason the death rate wasn't way higher is that many many people self isolated for their own protection in early March.
>The chances of dying in a car crash are 1%, but that doesn't prevent us from driving.
I don't think that statistic is even close to right. I know exactly zero people who have died in a car crash. Many of them are quite old.
The Australian statistics suggest that the odds of anyone in Australia dying of a car crash are 0.0000478 per person per year. This is considerably smaller than your statistic and so I am going to dispute it, at the risk of you thinking I am stupid.
I think we can safely say at this point that those projections were widely inaccurate and have been dis proven several times now as they were based on a completely inaccurate and incomplete data set.
So, the CDC currently believes well over 200k people have died in the USA as a result of COVID-19. That's with the lock-downs and all the other measures we have taken.
What are the current projections on how many deaths would have occurred if we did nothing?
They were. The COVID deaths in the USA are about double what has been reported. Not a conspiracy, just a reality of how the deaths are coded due to testing constraints.
I’m part of some online fitness communities and it’s insane the rationalizations people will use to go back to the gym. I have even heard of people driving 3hrs+ or staying overnight to go to out of state gyms with less restrictions. Which is actually very terrible on a macro level.
That said I do think it’s possible for gyms to adapt to be covid-safe by moving equipment outside, restricting the max number of people allowed in the exercise area, mandating masks and social distancing, and wiping down every piece of equipment after it’s used. I have seen some gyms doing that in San Jose. But I guess most gyms don’t want to do that even though gyms outside of dense urban area typically have pretty big parking lots they might be able to use with some open-air huts
yea my gyms here (texas) have been really good about this, either mandatory masks or open air, mandatory distancing, wipe everything down (my muay thai gym got like a metal exterminators tank for disinfectant they just spray everything with), etc etc. the article makes the point well, that if you close everything down, people will just do it anyway, so it's better to just have it in the open and under control and punish bad actors when they crop up
local gyms (as opposed to chain/bigbox) tend to be extremely tight-knit communities, which means people want to keep each other safe and will go out of their way to do it, within reason. most people don't care about everyone in their city in abstract, but they do care about members of groups they derive camaraderie from. hell of a lot safer than reopening restaurants, imo
So what about those young healthy people that interact with no one who’s at risk? I’m in my mid 20’s, and the best upper bound I’ve seen on risk of death for someone my age who is otherwise healthy is 0.05%. Not nothing, but comparable to 2 years of driving and well within the level of risk we give people agency to make decisions about every day. I’ve been through lockdown and I know what that huge hit to quality of life means to me, and the risk of covid is worth it to not have to live that way again.
My fear is solely that I pass it to someone at higher risk, and to that end I’m working from home, masking up, and there isn’t a single person in my life over the age of 40. But I’m also not holding back on seeing friends my age, and yes even throwing parties. We’re all in the same boat, and if they’re also out and about then they’ve made the decision that they’re comfortable with that level of risk themselves. I don’t think it’s a crazy one, and so I’m not going to make it for them.
This post is precisely the issue. The risk for everyone is not 1 in 200. That's what makes this complicated. I'm really struggling with this. How can we reverse all the fear that has damaged our society and given people a sense that they need to exaggerate the danger? Folks don't have capacity for risk analysis or understanding basic statistics, even on a message board like hacker news.
Everyone knows these things by now, why do people keep repeating it? you think the people going to the speakeasy gyms haven't heard it 100 times? The article points out that in general some people will always find a way.
there is also the probability of transmission. People living together in the same home is about a 20% chance of transmission. Casual contact( sitting nearby) is estimated to be about .7%
The total probability of hospitalization per contact is
so it is probably something like 1% * .7% * 3% per contact. So your probability of getting hospitalized is quite low per contact.
I personally have a bike trainer and a power cage at home. The one thing I absolutely miss is brazilian jiu jitsu. I see posts from the various gyms that are basically operating in full.
The question I've never found a reasonably answer for is this:
Whats the exit strategy? What has to happen for this to end?
For what I've read there's a good chance this virus will stay with us for the long term, just like the flu.
Waiting for the vaccine is kind of like hoping for a miracle, as it might not even work. So when will all this madness end?
Right now there is no exist strategy. There are possibilities though.
Assuming a vaccine doesn't appear, then we're left with herd immunity through community infection. There are problems with that though, because it's not yet clear whether infection with the COVID-19 virus even makes a person immune to future infection.
Amidst all the uncertianty a vaccine is our best hope. Personally I'm assuming this will be with us in some shape or form for many years.
> it's not yet clear whether infection with the COVID-19 virus even makes a person immune to future infection.
If you don't become immune after getting the virus, how would you become so after vaccination? My understanding is that vaccines have a weaker version or a portion of the virus inside them, and your body needs to make antibodies. But if that doesn't happen?
I don't think vaccines are a miracle. They're not certain, but that doesn't make them miracles.
The exit strategy should be to enough of a lock-down to get rates very low. This would likely have to be combined with quick-turnaround testing and contact tracing. The US largely failed with this. Other countries show what an exit strategy could have looked like. I'm not sure if it's still viable, but maybe.
This is what I wanted a lock-down to bring us, and what maybe still could:
* Access to testing: This has improved a lot. In March and April, I knew people with symptoms who couldn't get tested. Last month, my partner found it easy to get tested.
* Quick-turn-around with testing: This still sucks. My partner's test in July was easy to get, but the earliest appointment was five days out and it was another five to get the results. This isn't good enough.
* Contact tracing: We still don't have this, at least in most places. I would love to install a contact tracing app on my phone, but there isn't one. Seems they're regional, and Texas/Austin hasn't bothered?
* A reduction in growth-rates due to social distancing: We got this! Daily growth rate dropped from 1.3+ in mid-March to 1.06-1.08 in mid-April. (I haven't looked recently, but I don't think this has lasted. Still, we were on track to hit 100k deaths by mid-April without this effect.)
* New information about how to prevent it: We got some important new information! Turns out surfaces aren't a big deal, and masks are. This is the opposite of what we were told early on, and knowing to wear masks (and more recently, not to use gaiters as masks) is a Big Deal.
* Improved treatments: Only thing I've seen is the "proning helps" thing a few months back.
* Vaccines: We've made a lot of progress. More than I think experts expected by now.
So, yeah, we currently seem to have no real exit strategy other than waiting for a vaccine, or for herd immunity. That doesn't mean it's rational to just exit without a strategy.
For now, I'm just going to stay mostly locked down until the vaccine happens or our government decides to step it up and do enough of the things listed above to get the spread under control. Not everyone can do this -- as another commenter mentioned, things that aren't urgent the first week will become so after a month, or six months, and these things are different for different people.
But as much as I liked going to the gym, I'm going to continue to forgo that.
The first fundamentally different thing should be the presence good testing and contact tracing. With high rates, I don't think that's a viable strategy, but if cases are few enough, it should work.
Different countries have done different things, but my understanding is that South Korea avoided a lock down for the most part by implementing this before cases were widespread. They occasionally add some temporary restrictions, but I think "sometimes we have to add some restrictions until there's a vaccine" is a livable long-term situation. What we're seeing in the US is that for a lot of people, our current situation isn't.
>>Yes, we can't shut everything down but you'd think the article was about shutting down grocery stores
Ahh the old "essential business" justification.
Every business is essential to the owners, employees and even customers that depend on those businesses. I do not believe it is the proper role of government to tell people what is and is not "essential" to them.
This is with out getting it into the corrupt policies many local government employed where by some businesses where allowed to operate due to political reasons, but other similar businesses were forced to close again for political reasons.
Then there was completely illogical enforcement where small retail businesses where forced to close even when they were doing Online Only sales and the only person in the store was the owner.[2]
Mike Rowe is correct: all workers are essential.[1]
> Also congratulations for not caring about a 1 in 200 chance of death (pretty high by the way) because you're healthy and passing on the risk to some vulnerable person (probably your parents or a school teacher) with a 1 in 10 chance of death
To preface, I disagree on the pandemic damage vs lockdowns damage (other than the economy, projected increase in deaths from heart disease, cancer, increase in suicides and domestic violence and (in the developing world) starvation, malaria, tuberculosis, reported by UN and WHO).
I also estimate the risks of COVID to be 10-20x of flu (and I had a relative who died from flu complications - maths is still maths), so I take 20x the precautions compared to what I do for flu in a year when I forget to get the shot... 20x of almost nothing is just a little more than nothing.
But that has been discussed above, with much better words and numbers.
I only have one unique contribution. A little bonus that made me happy to go outside to closed outdoor areas during stay-home orders, visit (willing) friends at the height of the lockdown, and hit the gyms and restaurants as soon as they opened with work-to-rule mask wearing and distancing, is that it makes unjustifiably sanctimonious people angry.
Yes, the comments here are insane. You might only get something like the flu, but your grandma is going to be killed by this, or at least crippled. Same with your parents! The people commenting here seem very selfish.
Well the lockdowns were intended to "flatten the curve" in the short term not impose China style draconian limits on personal movement until there is a vaccine 18 months later.
You’re going to write all that when BLM protest and Portland _riots_ are going on? Hundreds or thousands of people close up together breathing hard with or without masks??
Once one gets past the sexist language like "swole, maskless bros," there is an interesting idea in the article that a societal risk of long duration prohibitions is the development of shadow economies and contract enforcement mechanisms. I'm surprised to see such a libertarian POV from NPR.
Really, is every man who works out considered a "bro" now in America? That word is used six times in the article.
I go to a gym with a lot of bodybuilders, and I often forget how much of the world sees them as mindless thugs. And yet among us are at least two real-estate executives, a famous death-metal singer, a handful of computer nerds, a very famous (regionally) pop singer, a former Ambassador, at least one former Olympian, and a bunch of Hollywood stars when they happened to be in town. Plus, you know, ordinary men, women, boys, and girls who like to be fit, or are trying to get fit. Some are large, some are not. The oldest is 75.
Evelyn should swing by the Bay Club and do a bro count, see how that goes. Might offend a judge or two, especially if they're swole.
But it's not a an opinion or view, it's an behavioral economic fact. The same thing happened in the 1920's with prohibition, and the same thing is happening with the illegal drug trade.
Did the "shutdown normal gym" mean that patrons would be violating whatever policies forced the gym to shutdown in the first place?
If so, that really bothers me. Any excess contagion would endanger everyone, not just the gym users. Please consider reporting the details to the appropriate authorities.
EDIT: If someone is inclined to downvote this comment, I'd be very grateful for a clarification why (comment or DM). I'm trying to address some problems in my communication style, and I can't always infer how I could have done better.
on HN it is common practice to downvote when you do not agree with someone, but don't have any new information to add that is worthy of a comment. So basically don't worry about votes. If you start getting flagged that is a different story.
I appreciate the advice! I've made peace with HN's unexplained downvotes in general. Still, I'm trying hard to improve my communication style, so any feedback I can get regarding bad/good tone in my comments is super helpful.
I suspect the downvotes are related to the comment to report. HN tends to lean anti authoritarian, so the idea of reporting someone doesn’t tend to sit well here.
I’m on the fence with something like this. Covid-19 isn’t turning out to be nearly as scary as it looked like it might be in December (at least based on rumors coming out of wuhan). I still feel like there’s information at a high level (security clearance type stuff) that we don’t get to see, and so have to assume the stay stay at home orders are still founded.
That said, people in the US can only maintain this type of social distancing so long. A lot of people are reaching a breaking point. And if some speakeasy gyms help prevent a massive ‘fuck it’ style rave, then it might be a lesser of 2 evils kind of thing.
Yes of course there are limits, nothing should be held as an absolute. I also don't think it's a very complicated ethic, you follow it until it's no longer the right thing to do. As another commenter noted, rape and murder etc. obviously don't apply.
Most people can come to decisions like this without the mediation of a legal system. In this particular case, I don't think that ratting on gym owners who are trying to salvage their livelihoods by serving willing customers is worthy of reporting to the authorities.
Never thought I'd see the day where Americans turn in their neighbors to the state.
That's not a logical reason. Rules in society are supposed to exist to the benefit of everyone.
We can have a discussion about whether this particular rule really does benefit everyone, but clearly the ones that do should be respected, otherwise what's the point?
That's a lazy strawman. The people operating these businesses are doing what they can to survive, and they are dealing with willing customers. Both parties are exercising personal responsibility. Equating this kind of thing with murder and rape is juvenile.
Where is that money going to come from, if we've destroyed the engine of the economy? Small business is the engine of the economy, and since they can't afford FAANG's Irish Double Dutch sandwich tax dodges, they actually pay most of the taxes. With small businesses and their employees gone and not paying taxes, there is quite simply no money to spend. History shows that you can only print your way out of such a situation for a very short time...
“ U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) is the market value of the goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States. Across the 16 years from 1998 to 2014, the small business share of GDP has fallen from 48.0 percent to 43.5 percent. Over the same period, the amount of small business GDP has grown by about 25 percent in real terms, or 1.4 percent annually. However, real GDP for large businesses has grown faster, at 2.5 percent annually.”
I have not critically considered whether or not these statistics are the best indicator of the most effective contribution to the economy (or society).
Yet the printing press has had no problem running to keep interest rates low and the wall street casino bubblin'. We're getting the worst of both worlds. Many small businesses wouldn't be going bankrupt if there weren't a debt black hole expecting to consume much of their surplus via rent.
Reporting to the authorities in the US means calling the police. Don’t call the police in America.
Furthermore, virus or no virus, the right to peacefully assemble is a human right that cannot legally or morally be abridged.
I don’t want the police to shut down protests. I also don’t want them to shut down gyms, or voting, or churches, or any other peaceful reason (dumb) people wish to assemble.
Assembly in the middle of a pandemic is stupid and irresponsible. I don’t do it.
I also don’t want men with guns stopping those that do. You can’t fix (or stop) stupid with a Glock and a uniform, which is what TFA is illustrating.
Same deal. If either of those groups tell you to close (and they already have, in the case of speakeasy gyms), who do you think shows up next to make sure you’re closed?
It’s not men carrying clipboards. They’re carrying pistols, and they have machine guns in the trunk of the vehicle they drove there.
DO NOT call the state to solve your problems.
If you wouldn’t solve the problem by taking a gun over there, don’t call someone else to do that.
Every society has this, it’s not really a valuable comment.
This seems like simply a dodge or dismissal of the legitimate criticism that breaking most of society’s rules should not cause an armed opponent to suddenly appear. It’s unreasonable and uncivilized and frequently results in the small-rule-breaker being physically abused or even murdered, especially if they aren’t white.
Your casual dismissal of these consequences suggests that you are never targeted by these people. For that I am glad. I hope everyone can be as callous about the consequences for minor rule breaking one day.
That doesn't mean that we have to agree with the rules or the way they are enforced. However if you are not in agreement with the majority your options are war or not reporting others for their rule breaking. In general war is not a good option.
>I also don’t want them to shut down gyms, or voting, or churches, or any other peaceful reason (dumb) people wish to assemble.
You are attempting to equate assembly for the purpose of fighting racism or exercising vitally important activities like voting, with "assembly" for the purpose of "sick gainz bruh". This is such a false equivalency that it's laughable, and honestly also a little insulting.
It's equally insulting to posit the straw-men arguments like this. The degree to which BLM protests do any good is debatable. The degree to which they need to be public displays, mid-pandemic is also debatable, unless you are worried that the US is going to run out of seething hate and police brutality incidents by the time the pandemic is over.
The right to peaceful assembly is not conditional on legitimate purpose; same as the right to free expression.
Free speech means freedom to shitpost, not just write literature.
Correspondingly, freedom of assembly is for stupid and pointless things like church, moderately important things like gym, and not just critically important things like insurrection.
The proliferation of “illegal” gyms suggests that many people feel similarly.
>The right to peaceful assembly is not conditional on legitimate purpose; same as the right to free expression.
Yes it absolutely is. I have no idea why you think otherwise. The right to "free expression" is conditional as well. We prohibit certain "peaceful assembly" and "free expression" every single day and have done so for centuries. The classical example: you do not have the "right to free expression" to go into a crowded place and falsely yell "fire", because that would be a public danger. Similarly, going to a gym during a pandemic causes a public danger. "Right to peaceful assembly" doesn't apply.
"Peaceful assembly to work out" is in no way similar to "peaceful assembly for protesting". It's ridiculous of you to claim otherwise. It's so ridiculous that I can only believe you're trolling or trying to make an argument in bad faith.
Spreading virus is an act of violence. Intentionally spreading disease is in the law books as a violent crime. Is the casualty rate of police encounters higer than the casualty rate of COVID-19 encounters?
And what if the polices were wrong? I have looked at the data and came to the conclusion that the danger from covid is tiny (to see how low - check qatar - probably the country with most extensive testing) and preventing is totally not worth it the sacrifices and damage to society.
Qatar has 44000 cases per 1m pop and 69 deaths per 1m.
In the US, there's been 172k death in half a year for Covid. And if using the worst case data for flu season, it's 61k per year. So it's looking like for a full year, it'll be 344k death for Covid versus 61k death for the flu.
That makes Covid 5.6 times more deadly than the flu.
But, the Covid numbers here are from a complete lockdown, where people are social distancing, wearing masks, schools are closed, everyone is working from home if possible, etc. And even with those level of precautions, it is at best 5.6 times deadlier.
That's why the estimate from the CDC is that Covid is 10 times deadlier than the flu.
The other thing is, this only measures immediate death. But there are unknown long term risk. Other type of SARS virus are known to cause long term issues to people that recovered from it. Hopefully this doesn't turn out to be the case for Covid but it could, and we don't know yet.
The last problem is mutations are possible. There's already one known mutation that makes it even more contagious. And the more the virus spreads, the more likely it mutates as well. So containment is important for that as well.
Now, that's the risk of it from the data today. You can decide that it is a risk worth taking or not. That's kind of a personal thing. But it is absolutely much higher than the flu.
You can't just compare absolute death totals like that. We have a vaccine for the flu which reduces the infection rate. What if the reason COVID-19 has 5.6 times more deaths is because it has 5.6 times more infections.
In the 2017-2018 flu season (one of the worse, which had the estimated 61k deaths in the US) infected an estimated 45 million people in the US; that's roughly in the middle of the range of the number that have caught COVID-19 so far (30-50 million the last I heard; note this is an estimate of total cases, not the confirmed 5.7 million cases, but so is the 45 million).
So our current understanding is that COVID-19 is both more deadly and more infectious.
That's fine, when we say it's estimated to be 10 times deadlier, it isn't in terms of you being 10 times more likely to die from it than the flu if you catch it, but that Covid let loose in our population will result in 10 times more deaths.
This does take into account infection rates, it's absolutely relevant and it's the big reason for Covid being deadlier, because it is more contagious.
So from the data, we see that with social distancing, lock down, and all that, it still infects and kills 5.6 times more people than the flu does every year given the measures taken for the flu, which is to have some amount of the population vaccinated. Thus assumed that without any protections, it would be even worse, possibly killing around 620k people per year. That would put it above cancer and up there with hearth disease as the number one cause of death per year.
And that's precisely why we're hoping for a vaccine. So that we can hopefully get the infections down and stop it's crazy contagion rate to manageable numbers that result on much less deaths per year, and doesn't force us to continue with the more challenging measures for limiting the spread of the virus.
What does Qatar do to a person who is confirmed infected? Does the same action occur to someone with the flu?
What is Qatar asking it's population to do differently today, compared to this time a year ago? Does that have any meaningful impact on transmission rates?
> It's pretty locked down. You have an app that unless it's says healthy you are not allowed into any public place.
The explicit comparison to the flu doesn't really seem to hold, since the conditions applied to the infected aren't equal. If those carrying the flu were subject to the same conditions as those carrying this covid-19, the comparison would hold up a lot better.
> I illustrated it as a place in which there is so much mass testing that the mortality figures are more fact than fiction.
Mortality numbers as a % of tested peoples are hugely variable due to the differences in testing between nations.
Mortality numbers as a % of the population (deaths per 100k/1m) make for good comparisons, and unless the nation is engaging in outright deception, those numbers are reasonable to use as a comparison.
There are 10 times more cases in US that haven't been tested for is one explanation.
Look - my country no one bothers to observe measures and our system is far from overloaded.
I think that a lot of influential l people threw too much social capital on stay at home and stuff like this and now they just can't handle the situation if covid is less dangerous than thought.
> There are 10 times more cases in US that haven't been tested for is one explanation.
There are 10x more deaths as a percentage of the population in the USA than in Qatar. The number of tests / positive cases is not relevant to that number.
how is it that almost 6 months have passed and this same syllogism gets trotted out repeatedly? this is 1. factually incorrect, 2. morally reprehensible. everyone dies eventually and gets sick with something else someday. let’s just front load all the death into 2020 and get it done with forever, eh?
> Covid just frontloads some death for old people and ones with comorbirbidities.
Why bother treating any sick person if this is your position? The healthcare system would be a hell of a lot cheaper and easier if we just "frontloaded some death" for everyone who gets seriously ill.
> Covid just frontloads some death for old people and ones with comorbirbidities
When the actions to prevent these people from dying, uh "just earlier than they would have," are as simple as wearing a mask and social distancing, it is unethical to not do so.
Why? It's a pandemic. If anything we're lucky it wasn't more deadly than it is.
I'm not gaining muscle mass but I'm having absolutely no trouble whatsoever maintaining it at home with exercise bands and calisthenics. It's a tiny, tiny price to pay for helping keep my community safe.
I would sacrifice the gym for the rest of my life if it meant adding even a year of life to a single person. Sentient existence is immeasurably more valuable.
I guess there's a values gap there I don't know how to bridge. I don't recognize the entire category of unbounded obligations to preserve life that you're suggesting.
Yes, emphatically. The statistics clearly show that deaths from flu and other infectious diseases and lung conditions have dropped to nearly zero over the past several months. This doesn't pass the most basic smell test: People didn't stop dying from those things simply because of a new virus. The only reasonable conclusion is that those deaths were misattributed to the Wuhan virus because of political, economic, or other pressures.
Which is actually kind of on the higher side for the flu season. They attribute that most likely on the increased testing happening this year due to people getting tested for Covid.
The US is going to be something close to 1 death per 1k total population with the policies we have. It doesn't make logical sense to think the number could be orders of magnitudes lower in the US if we didn't close businesses.
Downvoting because it's none of your business. Honest question - and if you choose to downvote me I'd ask you extend me the same courtesy you asked for - how is a gymgoer endangering you, if you are staying 6ft from all others, wearing a mask, washing your hands and not touching your face?
Perhaps they are an essential worker, and don't have the option to stay at home?
Perhaps they have medical issues that leave them immunocompromised and may require hospitalization, putting them at a high risk of death from exposure to COVID patients?
Perhaps they are unemployed or at risk of unemployment due to pandemic restrictions, and the irresponsible behavior of people who are too cool to do body weight exercises at home could directly harm them by lengthening the time these restrictions are necessary?
"It's none of your business if other people break the law in a way that harms others."
Risk of transmission goes up indoors, with heavy breathing, and being exposed for longer than 10 minutes. People who exercise, are going to breathe heavily. People on equipment or in a class stay longer than 10 minutes. And gyms are indoors and often not well-ventilated.
The result is that gyms are an excellent space for spreading COVID-19. And measures that reduce the spread for things like walking around a store are not sufficient to reduce it to a safe level in a gym.
Researchers have been tracking many superspreading events around the globe, and there seem to be recurring locations no matter what the country. In addition to those we have heard most about, like prisons, food processing plants, and elder care facilities, there have also been numerous large superspreading events at bars, churches, offices, gyms, and shopping centers.
Off topic, and there are some who would argue reckless driving or even drunk driving is a victimless crime. The victimization occurs when (or if, since the vast majority of intoxicated driving incidents result in no damage) actual damage is caused to person or property.
What kind of logic is this? Spraying bullets into a crowd is a victimless crime unless someone gets hit, so we shouldn't prosecute otherwise? That's some serious mental gymnastics.
Note that those who argue that line also argue that the decision to drive while drunk makes it a planned attack if you do kill someone and so you are looking at first degree murder charges if you do happen to kill someone.
And yet somehow the GP managed to reply defending drunk driving as victimless instead. Sometimes analogies can be useful to reveal people's bizarre ideological commitments.
yeah, that is precisely what I was speaking of. It is good tactic for winning a absurd internet debate, but doesn't really further the original discussion, and certainly doesn't help educate anyone or build consensus.
To me it is a matter of goals, when posting.
I seek to learn something and/or share something, and think this is best achieved by replying to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.
I find that satisfaction of baiting a stupid post then refuting is short lived.
It can be a useful mode of argument, but I am not sure I have ever seen it used productively in an internet discussion.
This post is a good case in point. I don't thinking drawing the analogy helped to educate anyone who read it or establish the appropriate moral obligations of an individual living in a society.
Imo, it is effectively trolling, especially when presented in a one sentence post. Do you think it spawned productive discussion when reading the child discussions?
I think that depends on if you think they are strictly equivalent, on the same spectrum but a different by a matter of degree, or categorically different.
Once we start comparing and contrasting the two, it becomes a more interesting discussion. I don't think they are strictly equivalent, but am open to a difference of degree and exploring where the line is drawn and why.
Living in a world with other people involves risk, even without covid. Driving anywhere sober, for pleasure or work, puts yourself and others at some level of risk. This is legal and socially accepted, so we know there is some threshold.
Another interesting area of comparison is consent/ acceptance of risk. When I get on the road (or walk down the street) I accept the fact that another vehicle could careen out of control and kill me. In the case of the speakeasy gym, the members presumably are accepting the risk.
This brings up the last area of comparison, second order effects. Even if the two Speakeasy gym members consent to take a risk, what about 3rd parties that could be harmed. what are the chances a 3rd party is harmed, and how do we typically handle comparable 3rd party risks? Airborne particulate is estimated to cause 200k premature US deaths per year. How does the particulate from a road trip, flight, or web browsing compare?
If we were so inclined we could try to throw some numbers to these.
I'm not entirely sure which part of my comment you're arguing against:
> How is a gymgoer endangering you, if you are staying 6ft from all others, wearing a mask, washing your hands and not touching your face?
Are you saying that as long as the measures you listed are followed, any additional shutdowns required by the local/state government are unreasonable and are okay to ignore?
If instead you're saying that the measures you listed satisfy the local/state requirements for gyms, then I'm confused because I wouldn't expect the gym to be shutdown in the first place.
>Are you saying that as long as the measures you listed are followed, any additional shutdowns required by the local/state government are unreasonable and are okay to ignore?
Yes. How does a government shutdown help me, if I'm already isolated?
> The virus that causes COVID-19 is thought to spread mainly from person to person, mainly through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or talks. These droplets can land in the mouths or noses of people who are nearby or possibly be inhaled into the lungs. Spread is more likely when people are in close contact with one another (within about 6 feet).
What, without evidence of it ever spreading from one person to another in a grocery store, you believe it isn't possible? Is extrapolating the knowledge of how it spreads to the possibility of encountering that situation in a grocery store not viable here? Shall we wait for evidence of spread in every single possible permutation of leaving the house before we consider such an activity potentially dangerous?
I was challenging isolation. I go grocery shopping - I think it can be done safely. But, I wouldn't do it if I lived in some red state full of pandemic deniers with huge spread rates - it's too dangerous. In my area, everyone wears masks, everyone makes sure to social distance, so it's not as much of a risk. But I acknowledge that I'm not isolated, and that was the claim that was made.
>What, without evidence of it ever spreading from one person to another in a grocery store, you believe it isn't possible?
We have extensive contract tracing now in every state in the US, and around the world. I would think it wouldn't be that hard to show. Were you able to find any cases?
Those are big ifs. The reason businesses were shut down is because policy was put in place to enforce distancing and the business could not meet those policies.
> Her work makes it hard for her to talk to reporters, so we're not using her last name
Surely if you feel it necessary to omit someones last name you should err on the side of caution and omit their first name too? A fist name narrows a search down significantly.
I didn't attend J-school, but that sounds like a questionable practice ethically. A person has a right to be anonymous, but it should be noted they are anonymous. Making up a name for someone without disclosing that fact is questionable.
It is ethical and expected for a journalist to obscure facts to protect their sources. It is unethical for a journalist to fabricate facts to protect their sources.
Also as someone with experience being anonymously quoted by journalist before, it seems to be standard practice for the journalist to defer any decisions on how they would like to be referred to the source. Odds are Evelyn is the one who decided to just go by Evelyn. She probably doesn't care too much about absolute anonymity, but she also wants plausible deniability.
I can't help but chuckle. Soon mob will be running speak-easy gym you will need password to get in. Feds will start running sting operations. Fat Americans will become heroes of the pandemic.
You want to massively decrease the deathrate of COVID? (and death rates in general)
Deal with the 40% obesity rate in the US.
Death rates are extremely low if you're not geriatric or not fat. All the top killers are attributable to being fat and living unhealthy lifestyles. COVID is the scapegoat here.
Old age isn’t attributable to living unhealthy lifestyles, so I consider COVID a threat in its own right and not just a scapegoat. But I agree with your broader point that fighting obesity, smoking, and other health risks should also be priorities even though COVID has greater mindshare at the moment.
Its true that old people have a higher deathrate, but we'll see deathrates in general drop in the years following 2020. Most of the people that are dying right now already have a foot in the grave. We won't know the impact of COVID specifically until many years after and a lot of data engineering. At that time, people won't care and the sensationalist numbers will win out.
It’s not even a secret. Outside, in Lake Merritt are roughly 50 people daily working out with weights in the grass. No distancing. No masks. No fuss. No china flu. No china cold.
I get that your comments are advocating for a contrarian opinion, and that's a frustrating position to be in, but would you please stop doing it with snark, flamebait, and gratuitous provocation? It isn't just that it breaks the site guidelines. The problem is also that it discredits whatever truth there is in your minority view, because posts like this give people an extraneous reason to reject it: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....
This comment would be fine without the provocations at the end.
FFS, healthy people can catch COVID and have serious, life-impacting or deadly complications. Yes, it's more likely to kill older people. That doesn't mean it isn't still dangerous for younger and healthier people.
Yes, it is possible for young healthy people to have complications from COVID.
The thinking must go one step further: what is the likelihood of a deleterious outcome? Is it more than the likelihood than them getting in a crash while on the way to the gym (which we do not prohibit)?
A further question: is the mitigating response impacting other outcomes that are important?
In multi-objective analysis you must consider more than just one factor to arrive at an optimal state. I fear the analysis done by many laymen in this area only considers one factor (COVID infection), and even then, considers it without nuance.
Went to the gym 3 times a week, cycled 25k every weekday, ran on the weekends.
Now I can only walk, after covid, which I got in early March. I'm hoping to try jogging again at some stage, after CT scans on my lungs, but I think it's a bit of a pipe dream. After 5 months the daily nausea has stopped.
No prior conditions. Early 40s.
edit: can't think of another site on the internet you'd get downvoted for the above, HN is really something
re: the downvotes: Honestly I believe that HN is being brigaded by libertarians and /thedonald types. It's become really vehemently political and awful lately. Something's going on. Every comment that mentions this is removed, so there's that. The mods don't seem to care, or have an agenda from Thiel.
i mean, it's ridiculous that an article on gyms is on the front page of a hacker news site. it's so far from the original vision. it used to be you'd come to HN to hear about the latest tech news and discuss software, startups and gadgets. now it's just bloviated non-tech related articles like this that just stoke up comment flame wars. what a fall from grace.
That's untrue, of course. But why don't you supply links so readers can make up their own minds? When people post linkless claims like this, usually they're omitting some important aspect of the story.
I could never understand the point of a gym. Just a pair of running shoes. Some dumbbells. I picked up slacklining and bosu ball training during the lockdown. Why does one need a "gym" ??
What's the point of restaurants when people have stoves and microwaves in their homes? It's a service, it provides convenience.
Sure, I could buy several hundred thousand dollars' worth of free weights, machines and kettle bells, and a treadmill, and install a big tv over it and get satellite cable, and somehow fit all of that and a sauna and a swimming pool into my tiny apartment, and have to worry about moving it all every time I move, and about maintenance and everything else, or I could just walk into any Gold's Gym on the planet and have nothing but the workout be my problem.
You don't need all that equipment to work the same muscle groups. Honestly, a $45 set of resistance bands is a great buy and these haven't experienced the same supply runs that heavy, more obvious equipment has experienced.
Resistance bands are not even close to real weights. The feel is completely different and the resistance scales in a way that is counter productive for a lot of exercises. You don't have a constant measure of strength and progressive overload is impossible. Resistance bands are already as a supplement to free weight training but you can't get the same experience.
A circuit workout maximizes efficiency. Machines isolate muscle groups. Similar results can be achieved with free weights, but that requires paying attention to form, which is difficult at exertion limits. It is difficult to break form on a machine. Hence, machines can enable you to overtrain but they are also excellent at preventing injuries.
If you regularly lift truly heavy weight, you need a squat rack and a rubber floor capable of sustaining equipment drops.
Going from a dedicated machine to another dedicated machine is faster than reconfiguring a universal machine like a Bowflex. Pace matters in a workout. Rests are regulated.
I own variable weight equipment. Someone sold me a set of Turbobells, which scale from 5 to 60 pounds per hand. It is a great system similar to Bowflex Selectech. My workouts require using 3 progressively heavier weights. It is a common body building technique.
So, for my arms I need 10, 12.5, and 15 pounds. Some exercises are 15, 17.5, and 20 pounds. My legs are stronger, so I use 35, 40, and 45 pounds. If I didn't have an adjustable set, this would be a lot of free weights and good luck finding fractional sizes in a store.
Gyms usually have good air flow, at least at the gyms where I am a member. Many have amenities like swimming pool, whirlpool, massage chairs and so on.
Dropping weights at a gym is annoyance. Doing so in an apartment above neighbors is evictable.
People whose goal is to lose weight do not need a gym.
Completing my workout with a set of dedicated weights at 2am when I have the gym to myself is at least 20 minutes faster than with my adjustable weights. So, using a gym also saves time.
Costs to replicate a gym:
1. 8x4 1" gym mat - about $150, weighs over 100lb - just looked into this last week. 6x3' horse stall mats are decent also.
2. Free weights - a few hundred all-in
3. 8' Mirror - not cheap and yes they are necessary
4. Adjustable bench - over $100
5. Gym-like variable height adjustable treadmills are not cheap
All of this takes space to store. If you do not have excess space, that adds to setup and teardown time.
“Fancy fit”, that is brutal haha. Some guy probably spent hours every week painfully doing the right mix of weightlifting, HIT and yoga to achieve that lean but muscular look popular with a certain class of women, probably thinks he looks tough and gets called “fancy”. At some point I’d just embrace being fat.
I see a lot of outdoor gyms in parks and what not. Outdoors is not only safer but also more pleasant. And if it rains a bit running through the rain will give an extra feat you don’t find in regular gyms. Ok, kidding about the rain but I prefer doing my workouts outside the gym when the weather permits. Calistenics aka exercises with the weight of your body are quite efficient and don’t make one look like an ogre
>Outdoors is not only safer but also more pleasant.
Speak for yourself. I live in a hot and humid place and exercising outside is incredibly unpleasant. It's 10 times worse if you're standing in direct sunlight.
>Calistenics aka exercises with the weight of your body are quite efficient and don’t make one look like an ogre
You’re an exception and you are more than welcome to join a secret gym. I was just pointing out to others that outdoors is a good option for exercising, at least during the summer. If you want to look like an ogre you probably don’t want to be seen outdoors anyways.
People are free to do whatever they want and look however they want, I agree with that. I am not shaming anyone for striving to look like an ogre, it's their preference but I still think it is an unhealthy thing to do to your body and a fad. I have 2 friends who bulk up and are actually in a very bad shape mobility wise, their arms are so big that they can't reach arms behind their backs and stuff like that. Plus that they can lift big weights but don't have much endurance and tire easily.
Sure, adding a bit of shape to your body is not a bad thing but exaggerating it doesn't lead to good outcomes
You seem to have some pretty fundamental misunderstandings about strength training. Even very intense programs can be undertaken without turning into an immobile blob of muscle. Strength is gained not only through hypertrophy but also through neurological changes, particularly those related to motor unit recruitment. Technique is also critical and fixing flaws there can lead to large improvements.
>I have 2 friends who bulk up and are actually in a very bad shape mobility wise, their arms are so big that they can't reach arms behind their backs
Bodybuilding is only one type of strength training. Furthermore, the primary goal of bodybuilding is aesthetics, not necessarily strength. That's not to say that they're not strong, but there's a reason why body building competitions will involve flexing in front of the judges while olympic lifting competitions won't.
> If you want to look like an ogre you probably don’t want to be seen outdoors anyways
i struggle to see this as not shaming. also there's plenty of other middle ground between bodyweight exercise and "ogre".
i don't disagree w safety of outdoors and avoiding illegal infection incubators. i just think your suggestions around Calisthenics and comments on ogres are ignorant. not everyone has your preferences for body shape, access to climate and physical abilities.
I CHALLENGE you to make yourself look like an ogre. Based on your comment I can almost guarantee that you have no idea what it takes to get anything close to “ogre”. More likely than not, if you tried your hardest you would only end up looking sexier than you are now.
A lot of this fretting seems to come down to people who are bodybuilder types.
You don't need to be in a commercial gym to maintain solid functional fitness.
You might need to be in a commercial gym to maintain unnatural levels of muscle mass and body weight for bodybuilding & powerlifting. Even that stuff can still be done in a home gym setting though given an equipment budget.
This is not a health argument, it's not even proven bodybuilding is healthy.. excess mass from body building & powerlifting tends to have negative effects later in life due to the metabolic strain of the extra weight.
Just deal with the idea you can stay super fit but you might not weigh as much.
Gymnasts, rock climbers, etc.. are all ultra elite strength athletes that get by largely with bodyweight exercise & minimal equipment. They just don't have abnormally high body mass.
Outside of these arguments of "I'm too big and strong to get enough home equipment to keep my gains Bro!" it mostly seems to come down to narcissism.. desire to be seen in the gym and to socialize in the gym. If that's such an important part of being in the gym it's no different than not being able to handle avoiding bars.
You can still have a training partner for spotting... just make sure it's the same training partner and you both keep good behavior outside of workouts and it'll be pretty safe.
I don't get it. Unless you're training for a very specific purpose (like an MMA fight or football season), why do you need specific indoor gym equipment? Shelter in place orders are largely lifted, so you can workout outside: run, do pull ups on a tree branch, ride a bike, lift a heavy stone, do an outdoor yoga class, etc. Hell, you only need maybe a 6' x 6' area for a perfectly effective body weight routine, even inside.
I get that some of this can be related to body dysmorphia, but that's probably a tiny corner case. Is it the thrill of doing something "illegal"/dangerous? Is it more denial about the impact of COVID? Hustlers trying to capitalize on a crisis?
Edit: based on some of the replies, it looks like it boils down to a sense of entitlement: people wanting to stick to their routines without a care of putting others at risk.
Barbells and dumbbells are appropriately ergonomic (handles, balance, etc.) and won't ruin your back if you use proper technique. Lifting a heavy stone is a recipe for injuring yourself severely.
People need specific indoor gym equipment if they lift, which is a very valid form of exercise. Or, you know, if it's raining or thunderstorming or a humid 100°F outside.
And bodyweight exercises only get you so far, even if you're doing one-handed or one-legged versions.
You can't just dismiss the fitness routines people have spent years choosing and refining and getting better at. The fact that you seriously suggest lifting a heavy stone demonstrates you don't seem to know much about safe fitness at all.
> People need specific indoor gym equipment if they lift, which is a very valid form of exercise. Or, you know, if it's raining or thunderstorming or a humid 100°F outside.
I've been lifting for 15 years, mostly in the gym. The last couple of years though, I've realized how much you can do with bands. You can't beat them on cost and convenience in the realm of home gym equipment. The only thing you can't reasonably do with them are squats. Deadlifts can be substituted with pull-throughs which are a better posterior chain movement anyway. Yea, you might have to do more reps. That's infinitely better than nothing.
Unless you're a competitive strength athlete, or trying to be one, not having access to a gym is frankly an excuse. In my younger days I used to have a very rigid mentality when it came to strength training which eventually led to burnout and extended vacations from the gym. Having mental flexibility instead of striving for some notion of perfection is what's kept me in this game long-term.
>You can't just dismiss the fitness routines people have spent years choosing and refining and getting better.
I am not, It must be very hard, to take away something you love and trained.
Society is asking you to sacrifice a big thing for something that may not benefit society at all. The chances of you catching and then spreading are ~ 1/1000. Assuming a 1% mortality. We are asking 100,000 people to give up something they love to save one loved one.
My own value system is that my enjoyment is not worth 1/100,000 of a person life. I would say in the order of 1/1,000,000. Based upon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALARP is where I get my figure.
I am interested which figure you think is reasonable - 10^5 or 10^6 or between or higher or dismiss the risk entirely ?
Lifting stones has been a thing since at least ancient Greece.
On that note, construction workers do severely damaging work every day (not being sarcastic, they mess up their bodies for people who will haggle to the last cent). Show them more respect.
You can usually find a threadbare heavy equipment tire more easily though since most people with stones just let them sit whereas tires need to be disposed of.
You can use cheap resistance bands instead of pricey and heavy barbells and still get great results. You can hit all the same muscle groups just as hard. Honestly you probably hit more groups than what you hit in olympic lifts. These bands are also very available online compared to other equipment.
He answered your question directly and then you change the goalposts. Clearly you hold the opinion that gyms should remain closed, and that's fine, but why even ask the question?
"More arrogant than putting other lives at risk because you can't put your routine on hold for a bit? No. It isn't."
This is the part I'm confused about. If gyms were open, people who's lives were at risk still wouldn't go to the gym. Only people who didn't care would go. They are consenting to the risk that would inherently come with it. It isn't the type of place that at risk people HAVE to go, so why shouldn't we open it for people that are fine with the consequences? Also, restaurants are all completely open for dine-in in many of the places that gyms have yet to open. How does that make any sense? No one magically stops breathing for the hour+ they're in the restaurant.
I think quarantine should be down to the individual and the rules they'd like to implement on their private property (including their business), but you've probably already gotten that by now.
I run ultra distance as a hobby, and before lockdown, I lifted heavy weights twice a week to prevent catabolism. Since lockdown began, I have continued to work out as hard as I can, but I have lost a significant amount of strength and muscle mass. You just can't get a certain type of training stimulus without barbells and plates.
I imagine that the problem is much worse for bodybuilders and powerlifters.
I'm what some would call a gym rat. I have my own home Gym though.
Working out has solved a ton of problems for me. Anxiety, Depression, Mood Swings, Rage. You get into a routine, and you don't want anyone or anything to mess with it. It's what makes you feel good. For me its the difference between a productive day and an unproductive one.
Changing things up, especially with improvisation, can result in injury. Or just not getting a desired result. For example, I squat 400lbs or more. Would I try to squat a 400lbs stone, not only no, but hell no.
For some that go to real gyms, it's not just the workout. It's the comradery that comes with doing hard things with friends. It's socialization.
I think it has very little to do with being a rebel or a denier, and a lot more to do with it being a way of life, for a lot of us.
It can be very hard to keep the same high quality of workouts without going to a specific facility and training with the guidance and motivation from peers. Not to be rude, your suggestions sound like ideas from someone who doesn't really work out much. Pull up on a tree branch? Lift a heavy stone?
Everyone's risk profile is different. I work in statistics and data, so I certainly have a different understand that gives me a more realistic perspective on the dangers.
> Edit: based on some of the replies, it looks like it boils down to a sense of entitlement: people wanting to stick to their routines without a care of putting others at risk.
You asked why people would want specific equipment. You didn't ask whether the tradeoffs involved are worth it. The replies here mostly answer the question you asked, not the one you're pivoting to.
It is objectively more difficult to build strength using body weight exercises. Using a barbell or dumbbell allows for precise movements and gradual overload. Even body weight workout routines require equipment and space, which many people don't have. And many people have been locked down for months - it's enough time to destroy a huge amount of progress. For people who care about fitness, it is devestating. You can debate the morals of going somewhere with a higher risk of spreading corona, but it's silly to argue that people don't need gyms or special equipment.
Your right to something shouldn't be based on whether or not you "need" it. I'm fortunate enough to be in a state with open gyms and have nothing but respect for people who are taking risks to work out. Anyways, "needs": gym equipment has proper grips and cushioning for safe use over long periods of time. I'm less likely to blow out my back using proper form at the gym than with Macgyvered equipment at home. I need to go to the gym to use this equipment because lockdowns have caused a shortage and it's really, really, expensive to buy all the equipment yourself. You can also track and improve your performance over time with consistent incremental weights: I know that 10 additional pounds of resistance will always be 10 pounds, something that a bag of rocks can't replicate. Lastly, weight training creates a different physique to body weight training, endurance training/running, etc. You cannot decide that this physique is worth any less than the others.
Going to the gym is a ritual for many people, and rituals can be an essential part of maintaining one’s mental health. I’m not justifying the speakeasy gyms, but I completely understand why someone would feel compelled to use one.
A thing that is very important about rituals is that there are almost always triggers of when the ritual should be performed. Often that trigger involves being in a specific place.
For exercise, that trigger is going to the gym.
For work, that trigger is going to the office
For religion, that trigger is going to the church / temple / etc.
When you deprive people of the ability to be in the correct place, then their trigger is blocked and their rituals don't happen.
Yes, you could retool your rituals (work from home is the biggest example of this), but for many things, the motivation or desire just isn't there.
The spaces are too important to the ritual itself.
So I can totally see why people would want to go to the gym even if they weren't supposed to.
I can seriously relate to this. I have been going to the gym 5-6 days a week for years and absolutely loved it. As soon as the gyms closed down, my motivation to stay in shape plummeted. It was like a light switched off. I did absolutely nothing fitness related for a few months, just waiting for the gyms to open back up.
I finally started biking recently, but I struggle to get motivated and get out of the apartment to do it. That was never a problem when going to the gym.
I’ve been thinking about this problem, and I wonder how important smell is to rituals and it what extent we can use olfactory sensations to trigger different mind spaces.
Ive had a certain degree of success mimicking this by adding smells via essential oil defusers are key points like “starting work” or “preparing for bed”, but I can’t say I’ve found a silver bullet. Still, I think there’s something here.
Mental health is the reason why I still go to my crossfit gym. Its small, the same 8-9 people show up when I do. Ive only lived in this town for two years and my only friend moved away earlier this year - no family. I did quarantine when a case was discovered during the rare time I have to be an office and I had two serious depressive episodes in which I spent the better part of three days intoxicated. I've been into fitness for almost 15 years, sure I know I can get a workout 10 different ways on my own but right now I have to have other people.
I remember reading a twitter quote about someone who felt their workouts "didn't matter" if they didn't have their GPS tracker with them on the workout.
Gym, as in the physical location, is also very much part of the "fitness habit". It doesn't feel the same doing it outside by yourself.
You shouldn't be doing pullups on tree branches, no matter how sturdy they look. I know someone who was seriously injured while using a seemingly healthy tree branch to exercise.
A 6x6 area can be hard to find. In my apartment, getting that requires moving two bulky pieces of furniture.
When I injured my back (years ago), I had to go to physical therapy and use specific machines that isolated the muscles in order to help regenerate muscle in the area. The physical therapy office was connected to a health center which was essentially a public gym. Together with my trainer, we used the facility's weight lifting and resistance band machines in a safe and controlled manner.
It has since healed, and I am better now. However, there was a point in time where I had to continue going to the gym and keep using those weight machines. It took a few years before I was back to normal and could start working with more generalized equipment. So there's more than just a sports-focused need (like MMA fighting or football) for gym equipment, and that equipment cannot easily be substituted, nor can it be done safely with a bike or a heavy stone.
For a lot of people serious about the gym, they are way past just getting any workout in. They are very specific about what workout, what machine, what day of the week, etc.. Just switching to running is like telling some backend architecture programmer to just switch to Photoshop; to an outsider they're both tech on computers..But in the bubble we all know it's world's of difference.
Nothing to do with body dysmorphia or doing something "illegal" but based on the fact that covid is not as severe that warrant stopping recreational activity.
I tried doing body weight workouts during the lockdown and it all felt extremely unsatisfying and ersatz after being used to my normal strength workouts. I also struggled not to lose muscle mass that had taken me a long time to build up.
Removing anything associated with people's identity is going to cause a ruckus. A lot of these things are part of people's mental and physical health regimens. The story is the same for bars, gyms, churches, etc.
I've lost 2+ inches on my arms, chest and legs after 20 years of working out fairly consistently. I was the strongest I had ever been just before COVID-19 hit. I'm not super-depressed about it quite yet, because the gym had become a bit of a crutch for avoiding dealing with problems in my life.
But after so many months off, I'm reaching the point where the lost gains might not be recoverable. I have to decide sometime soon whether to get back into the gym or give it up permanently.
It's not a total loss since I've been doing handyman work for my boss and 50 incline pushups 2-3 times per week. I'm in generally good health and my face is thinner. Still stinks though.
I bought a used weight bench and plan to use it soon. And I'm still paying my gym membership, only $20/mo for life at a converted Gold's Gym. But we get such a boost in the first 6 weeks of n00b gains after a break that I feel it's better to go all-in rather than dabble.
Oh and to answer your question: pumping iron is a hack. My girlfriend does kickboxing, and it's a tremendously physical exercise revolving around burpies and other crossfit-style functional training. It's really good. But, I feel that weightlifting provides a much higher bang for the buck because it takes advantage of 2 to 5 day overcompensation cycles in the body so that gains continue indefinitely. So my intensity under the bar over an hour and a half period never even reaches the intensity of her warmup. Yet I put on perhaps 2 to 4 times as much muscle as I would cross training, for 1/2 to 1/4 the effort, which works out to about a 4 to 16 times better return on investment (an order of magnitude better result).
It is a healthy hobbie. By the way, also cleans you mind. I do run long distances, but with the current situation I am no longer able to run outside they way I wanted. So I started going to gyms, and yes, probable they should not be working, but it keeps me mentally sane.
I started a bodyweight routine (the Reddit recommended routine) in March and have had awesome results so far. It can be daunting to get started but you can do full body workouts if you buy a set of rings and a pull up bar. I eventually put a bar up in my garage but I was able to start working out with one of the basic door mounted bars at first. So you really can get started with very minimal upfront equipment costs.
I could probably target my leg muscles more effectively at a nice gym with barbells, but after 5 months, I'm still working through bodyweight based progressions for deadlifts and squats, so I don't feel like I've plateaued yet. I've made big progress too. When I started I could barely do a single pull-up and now I'm up to 3 sets of 6 per workout. Similar story for pushups, I can crank out 20-30 of those now no problem, where I struggled to hit 5 before.
The ease with which you can get fit at home has been one of the pleasant surprises of this pandemic.
You're coming from the perspective of someone who is still getting newbie gains. If your goal is to be reasonably fit and healthy, you're on the right track.
But some people have been going to the gym for decades and take it very seriously as a hobby. Losing access to the gym will set them back years.
For many of us, working out is a core part of our identity. It's taken literal years to get to the levels we're at, and to see that progress roll backwards is debilitating, in a mental sense.
Since you don't work out, I assume you like food. Imagine if you had to spend months eating nothing but Soylent because of $reasons, then when you complain you get chirping like "I don't get it, it's the same nutritional value, you don't need any real food".
You can work outside but you are limited by the weather, and by available equipment. In quarantine it has been impossible to find a squat rack and a complete set of barbell plates. Whereas every gym (besides planet fitness) will have several of these.
Further, "Heavy stone" workouts do not easily lend themselves to progressive overload, or varied programming.
Read the description of the folks that invaded one person's private speakeasy gym: "gym bros" who were described as "grunting and using all the equipment, taking selfies in the mirror, flexing their triceps". I'm guessing there's more to it than just getting pumped, perhaps there's an audience component, too.
I would call the "proper authorities", but since there is a State Police car parked outside every morning, and he is in there working out, just like before the pandemic, I doubt calling anyone would do anything.
Adding to the post, I read it earlier... it is really strange that people feel they have to go work out in groups. Or get together, or go to bars. I find it amazing we can not see short term sacrifice for long term gain.