Fauci Says there is a way sports (ie Professional Sports) can resume this summer.... this does not sound good for softball to return before fall...

[BlaineAB]

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but that said,
I think the general public doesn't know everything about covid-19 that those with a high-level security clearance know. I just wish that black helicopter would stop following me.

I'm guessing the middle of or late May there will be some relaxing of social distancing measures in lower density areas of the country, but not in cities like NYC, Boston, Chicago, SF, LA, etc.

 

[_MIA_]

This country has always had levels of acceptable deaths for different things. For instance, almost 40,000 people a year die from traffic accidents. If we were to drop the speed limit to 10 mph, those numbers would go down dramatically. So why don't we do it? Because of convenience and our economy. We have accepted a certain level of fatalities in exchange for a efficient economy. We need to do the same thing with Covid-19. Like the seasonal Flu, we will never see zero cases and deaths from it.

You seem to be wanting a significantly lower acceptable fatality rate than most everyone else and that's easy to do when you have a guaranteed job like you do.

I guess this is what I didn't respond to which you were peeved about.

My stance from the beginning is if we can begin to operate near where we operate for the flu every year then we are good to go back to normal (e.g. softball,etc) We can go back to work before that but precautions need to be taken. It isn't the pure numbers (e.g. total number of deaths) I am talking about in relation to the flu, in particular for things that won't really effect the economy (softball, etc) . I am talking about a) risk of getting infected and b) risk of dying if infected. Like I said before, this will be regional.

 

[wheresmycar]

But Flash, being in NY skews your perspective, too. The rest of the country isn't like New York. We dont' rely on mass transportation. No where else has the density you guys have. And for a state with 21 million people, you had 718 ICU beds. New York was a perfect storm for this; I don't think there's any reason to think it would happen that way anywhere else.

While population density definitely contributes to easier spread, don't think rural communities are immune. Ask Albany GA, where 1 person infected 20 people at a funeral, and now a month later, they have 1300 known cases, and 83 deaths. This is a city with population of 75k. The hospital, which only has 14 beds in the ICU was overwhelmed in two days.

Fulton County, GA (Atlanta) which has a population of 1 Million+, only has 1800 cases and fewer deaths, 62. Rural communities are not protected from this thing, and they don't have the hospital capacity to deal with it, which will make it more devastating.

 

[Ken Krause]

And that's fine. If you are concerned, continue to practice social distancing. Don't go out to eat or to the gym. Don't give your pitching lessons. Wear a mask in public. Wash your hands often and don't touch your face. Don't visit your older relatives. Get your groceries delivered. No one is going to prevent anyone from practicing their preferred level of safety, just don't impose that on everyone.

The difference here is that you going out and carrying on life as usual could end up affecting me, even if I stay at home. At some point I have to go out and get groceries, or have them delivered. The delivery person, who may have decided no one is going to stop him from doing what he wants, could have it. It's not just about direct contact. It's about all the indirect contacts as well.

I don't like taking my shoes off to go on an airplane either. One person tried to bring a bomb on in his shoes once and now we all have to do it. Seems like overkill as well. But if we didn't do that, sooner or later someone would blow up an airplane with a bomb in their shoes now that they know it can be done. We'll never know how many lives were saved by taking off shoes, because the incidents never happened. The fact that there haven't been as many deaths from COVID-19 as expected doesn't necessarily mean the models were wrong. They may have been spot-on. But because the states took the actions they did there's a pretty good likelihood they are a lot less than they might have been.

Sometimes your personal freedoms have to be set aside for the greater good.

 

[wheresmycar]

Using the same stats as being used for covid we only know the 'number of covid confirmed tests..

COVID
Per https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html

• Total cases: 605,390
• Total deaths: 24,582

Death/Sick and Tested = 24582/605390 = 4.1% Covid mortality

FLU
Per https://time.com/5610878/2018-2019-flu-season/
"In total, the CDC estimates that up to 42.9 million people got sick during the 2018-2019 flu season, 647,000 people were hospitalized and 61,200 died. "

Deaths/Sick and Tested=61,200/647,000 = 9.45% flu mortality

We have not been comparing the same denominators.

No!!!! 647,000 Hospitalized with Influenza, is NOT the same as tested with Coronavirus. Only around 20% of those testing positive with Covid 19 are hospitalized. Most of those tested positive with Covid 19 are told, go home and isolate, come to ER if you cannot breath. If you want to compare apples to apples, you should take 20% of the total Covid 19 cases. 24,582/121000 = 20% Mortality if you are admitted to the hospital with Covid 19. Over twice as deadly as being Hospitalized with influenza.

This is not the FLU!!!!

 

[Ken Krause]

Obviously, nobody is signing up to die. Using that thinking, we all just stay in our homes forever. We aren't there now, but it will come down to the "smart people" figuring out how we get to a point where the death counts are acceptable. The text below is from the CDC website, and yet I could walk into any store today and buy cigarettes. You could say I at least have a choice in that death, but even their numbers say 41,000 year from second hand smoke.


"Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, including more than 41,000 deaths resulting from secondhand smoke exposure. This is about one in five deaths annually, or 1,300 deaths every day. On average, smokers die 10 years earlier than nonsmokers."

The secondhand smoke issue is why you can't smoke in bars or restaurants or airplanes or office buildings or any enclosed space. I'm sure there are people who will argue that the government is infringing on their personal freedom by forbidding them to smoke in those places. The goal there is to reduce the exposure to secondhand smoke and try to prevent those deaths. I would imagine many of those 41,000 live with someone who smokes, or is somehow exposed to it on a regular basis, although I don't pretend to know whether that is true or not. .

The fact that you can walk into a store and purchase cigarettes is a separate issue. The thing is, if you smoke near me and I inhale it once the odds of me dying are minuscule. If you have COVID-19 and cough near me once the odds of me catching it are far greater, as are the odds of me dying from it, especially because I'm an old fart. That is the difference.

 

[clemenslee1]

The difference here is that you going out and carrying on life as usual could end up affecting me, even if I stay at home. At some point I have to go out and get groceries, or have them delivered. The delivery person, who may have decided no one is going to stop him from doing what he wants, could have it. It's not just about direct contact. It's about all the indirect contacts as well.

I don't like taking my shoes off to go on an airplane either. One person tried to bring a bomb on in his shoes once and now we all have to do it. Seems like overkill as well. But if we didn't do that, sooner or later someone would blow up an airplane with a bomb in their shoes now that they know it can be done. We'll never know how many lives were saved by taking off shoes, because the incidents never happened. The fact that there haven't been as many deaths from COVID-19 as expected doesn't necessarily mean the models were wrong. They may have been spot-on. But because the states took the actions they did there's a pretty good likelihood they are a lot less than they might have been.

Sometimes your personal freedoms have to be set aside for the greater good.

Thats nothing new, and happens with other viruses as well. We have never shut down the economy because of a what if? Do we shut it down becuase we might infect someone because of a flu carrier that has no symptoms is out and about? No.

Many are treating this as if say: there are 10 people in a room. An asymptomatic person walks in, coughs or sneezes. Now all 10 are infected.

 

[_MIA_]

Many are treating this as if say: there are 10 people in a room. An asymptomatic person walks in, coughs or sneezes. Now all 10 are infected.

Well the R0 number for Covid-19, which measures how infectious a virus is, seems to be at least twice that for the flu so the odds are more people will get infected than if that person just had the flu. That and the mortality rate compared to the flu, which may be less than initially thought, are the biggest differences between this and flu. Both of those things are a function of the actual structure of the virus (and that is my knowledge limit on that..I know the amount of "spikiness" of the outside structure effects R0 but that is about it)

If you just look at small sample sizes, e.g. 10, then none or all 10 could get infected. But you cannot do that, you have to look at things statistically which we as humans are very bad at. It is the reason that people that are afraid of flying have no issues driving their car down the highway at 90 MPH..

 

[clemenslee1]

Well the R0 number for Covid-19, which measures how infectious a virus is, seems to be at least twice that for the flu so the odds are more people will get infected than if that person just had the flu. That is a function of the actual structure of the virus.

If you just look at small sample sizes, e.g. 10, then none or all 10 could get infected. But you cannot do that, you have to look at things statistically which we as humans are very bad at. It is the reason that people that are afraid of flying have no issues driving their car down the highway at 90 MPH..

Conclusions

Although R0 might appear to be a simple measure that can be used to determine infectious disease transmission dynamics and the threats that new outbreaks pose to the public health, the definition, calculation, and interpretation of R0 are anything but simple. R0 remains a valuable epidemiologic concept, but the expanded use of R0 in both the scientific literature and the popular press appears to have enabled some misunderstandings to propagate. R0 is an estimate of contagiousness that is a function of human behavior and biological characteristics of pathogens. R0 is not a measure of the severity of an infectious disease or the rapidity of a pathogen’s spread through a population. R0 values are nearly always estimated from mathematical models, and the estimated values are dependent on numerous decisions made in the modeling process. The contagiousness of different historic, emerging, and reemerging infectious agents cannot be fairly compared without recalculating R0 with the same modeling assumptions. Some of the R0 values commonly reported in the literature for past epidemics might not be valid for outbreaks of the same infectious disease today.


R0 can be misrepresented, misinterpreted, and misapplied in a variety of ways that distort the metric’s true meaning and value. Because of these various sources of confusion, R0 must be applied and discussed with caution in research and practice. This epidemiologic construct will only remain valuable and relevant when used and interpreted correctly.

Complexity of the Basic Reproduction Number (R₀)

Complexity of the Basic Reproduction Number

wwwnc.cdc.gov

 

[eagle6]

The difference here is that you going out and carrying on life as usual could end up affecting me, even if I stay at home. At some point I have to go out and get groceries, or have them delivered. The delivery person, who may have decided no one is going to stop him from doing what he wants, could have it. It's not just about direct contact. It's about all the indirect contacts as well.

I don't like taking my shoes off to go on an airplane either. One person tried to bring a bomb on in his shoes once and now we all have to do it. Seems like overkill as well. But if we didn't do that, sooner or later someone would blow up an airplane with a bomb in their shoes now that they know it can be done. We'll never know how many lives were saved by taking off shoes, because the incidents never happened. The fact that there haven't been as many deaths from COVID-19 as expected doesn't necessarily mean the models were wrong. They may have been spot-on. But because the states took the actions they did there's a pretty good likelihood they are a lot less than they might have been.

Sometimes your personal freedoms have to be set aside for the greater good.

Don't think we should carry on as if things are normal. Social distance and be careful. Models are constantly changing based on the info being put into it. When NY decides to throw an extra 3000 deaths into the mix when they are not positive tests, we can't believe the models completely. But that's just my opinion. As far as setting aside personal freedoms for the greater good....how long are you willing to set them aside? If the answer is "for as long as it takes". Who gets to decide that length of time? I'm good with setting some aside for a finite period of time, but not as an open ended decree. I Don't trust that the folks making the decisions are always doing it for the greater good. Politics are at play all the time.

As far as taking shoes off before entering a plane, that's and inconvenience I may not like, but I can understand it. Doesn't cost anything and we can always choose not to fly. We have no other choices in our current situation.