Covid-19 Politics

[blackchubby38]

Sure I just want to respond to your belief that we're doing well.

The EU has a population of 446 million people. Below is a graph from a week ago of the EU's new cases compared to ours. At the time we had 25000 new cases per day. We now have more than 40000 a day.

https://twitter.com/profwolff/status...40862665072640

Remember when Italy was the worst hit country. Italy had 142 new cases today. We not only have more than 40000 new cases per day but are experiencing exponential growth in at least five states. We have 4% of the world's population and 25% of the deaths from covid. Doesn't that tell you something is wrong? Why should we be overrepresented in deaths per capita by 6X? Nearly every country that had an early outbreak like we did has far fewer new cases per capita.

So not only have we not done as well as the countries who have done the best job, we've done far worse than average. What do you think the consensus would be if we conducted a poll of epidemiologists and virologists from the top twenty research institutes in the country about the job we've done? I follow a bunch of them on twitter. I haven't seen one who thinks we've done even a reasonable job.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

Here's what I think our response would have been had it been guided by public health experts instead of Trump:

Shut downs the first week of March running for six weeks. Contact tracing in the largest cities once we opened up. Some counties have tried to get those efforts started but the CDC should have marshalled their resources to help. Mandatory mask wearing in businesses. People attended a rally for Trump in Tulsa and most people weren't wearing masks. Mask wearing in public should have been a bipartisan norm and it's something public health experts have recommended for well over two months. As soon as epidemiologists realized there was presymptomatic spread mask wearing should have become mandatory except for people who literally cannot on account of some health condition.

Opening up businesses based on reaching benchmarks set for number of cases per million residents and when those benchmarks break down, closing businesses that have contributed to outbreaks. If you actually set benchmarks based on case numbers relative to population density, there are no surprises.

Mask wearing could save 5% of gdp. People are so concerned about businesses, then why aren't people wearing masks?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...source=twitter

Finally, what should signify that we're doing well is that we either have fewer deaths per capita than average or have fared better than other countries in some quality of life metric. Have we?

Those are all reasonable actions that could have been taken. But do you think the shutdown should have been federally mandated, as in signed by an executive order by Trump. As for contact tracing, even if the CDC would have marshelled their resources you still would have an issue with people being hesitant to give up that information for a variety of reasons.

When the pandemic first started, public health experts were giving differing views as to whether or not people should wear masks. It took almost month here in New York State before Governor Cuomo made wearing a mask in public mandatory. I think that's why it took so long for masks to become mandatory.

As to why some people are not wearing them now. What I can tell you, some people are just idiots

As for what signifies how we are doing, I believe that measurement should be of how many people have recovered from the disease. Even with a vaccine, you are never going to have a zero infection rate. There are people who test positive that who will never develop symptoms.

But for the people who recover from the worst case scenarios that I talked about early, that is something that should give people hope.

[broncofan]

I'm not sure if the federal government could have mandated a shutdown but I think red states wouldn't have been as resistant to it if Trump wanted to do it. Here's what the American Bar Association says about the Constitutional issues. They seem to indicate Trump could have done it. Given the mood in the country and the fact that Republicans go lockstep with him, I don't think it would have been challenged.

https://www.americanbar.org/news/aba...h-to-pandemic/

The messaging on the masks was bad at the beginning because presymptomatic spread hadn't been confirmed. Only n-95 respirators (and surgical masks to a lesser extent) are good at protecting the wearer from disease, but the idea was that if someone has it, they should not be out in public. Once the who and cdc realized it was spread by people without symptoms, it became apparent masks could prevent an infected person from spreading it. For that purpose even cloth masks work alright.

Studies have been out for a while about the effectiveness of mask wearing if there's a lot of compliance. Republicans have made it a cultural issue. It causes needless death to have so many people think it's a special freedom to go out in public without a mask.

I don't know about the feasibility of contact tracing but we are a fairly wealthy country and have agencies that had close to three months to get ready for it.

I think our main point of disagreement if we boil it down is on bars, concerts and the like. It does suck for bar owners and other proprietors. These are not normal times though and we've bailed out industries before.

[Laphroaig]

I thought the idea was just wishful thinking. No only for the reasons that you have given, but there is no feasible way to pay for it and for a majority of people, $2,000 a month is not going take care of all of their expenses.

On a side note, you want to see a society quickly crumble, shut off the power. Then we will truly be in the middle of an apocalypse.

As I understand it $1000 payments to people were made in the US but I don't know if that was a one off or how many qualified for the payments.

As it stands, in the UK around 9 million people are on furlough from work and being paid up to £2500 a month by the Government to sit at home. That scheme is due to last till the end of October, though there are changes to the company contributions to this starting from the beginning of August.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...e-on-furlough/

"As of June 28, 2020, approximately 9.3 million jobs, from 1.1 million different employers were furloughed in the United Kingdom as part of the government's job retention scheme. The scheme, introduced in response to the economic damage caused by the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, covers 80 percent of an employees' usual monthly wage, up to 2.5 thousand British pounds a month.
How much does the scheme cost?
The UK government is estimated to have spent 20.8 billion British pounds on the job retention scheme, with that figure expected to rise to 80 billion by the time the program stops in October 2020. To pay for this scheme, among others, it is likely the government will have to resort to levels of borrowing not seen since the Second World War."


If as suggested, the furlough scheme has cost the UK Government £20 billion to date then that's still far less than the estimated £500 billion they spent to bail out the banks.

In addition to the furlough scheme there's similar support for the self-employed, if they have the tax returns to prove it.

Remove major bills like rent/mortgage and the vast majority should be capable of living on that, particularly when "non-essential" shops were closed, so spending was almost all on food and other necessities.


There's already talk of raising taxes to begin clawing back the cost of the scheme.

[Stavros]

I think as a whole, the country has done fine.

Total Cases.- 2,727,853
Deaths.- 130,122
Total Recovered.- 1,143,334
Active Cases.- 1,454,397
Serious Critical.- 15,935

I have read first hand what the Corona Virus has done to people. When the disease is at its worst, I wouldn't want mine or anyone's loved ones to suffer like that and most of time the patient wound up dying in the hospital.

But I have also read cases about people who have survived the worst and were discharged safely home. I have also read cases about people who weren't as bad as those in the ICU and/or required hospitalization and they recovered. Although they're still dealing with some lingering effects.

Then there have been the mild cases where people were treated as outpatients.

Could we have a done better job in preventing the spread of the disease, yes. Maybe states should have started locking down a week earlier than we did. Or maybe we should have locked everything for 2-3 weeks while we had companies manufacture enough masks for everyone and then slowly re-open with states requiring people wear them in public. While the most vulnerable of the population continued to shelter in place.

But overall, I'm okay with the job this country has done as whole.

Just out of curiosity, what aggressive actions would you have liked seen taken.

Blackchubby38, your post offers a rational perspective, and it is important that you present the perspective in the most general terms. This is not an attack on your argument, but when the devil is, as always in the detail, I think the alarming aspects of the Pandemic are the ways in which specific social groups fare worse or better than others, the most obvious being the bias against elderly people, particularly if they have pre-existing health problems, the elderly in care homes, front-line health workers, and the poor.

When these segments are analysed a range of factors emerge:
--front-line health workers have been but always are vulnerable to the infections that exist in a hospital environment
-at the early stage in the UK there was criticism that front-line staff did not have adequate PPE
-care homes became incubators of the disease because vulnerable people were also likely to be less mobile than the average person: people clustered together in a relatively small space offering the virus unhindered opportunities to thrive
-the poor because they tend to have lower thresholds of immunity caused by degraded levels of nutrition, densely packed living spaces, and possibly, ignorance caused by an lack of English and thus an understanding of risks as declared by the local authority.

Just as important is the actual underestimation of cases, owing to the flawed collection of data. In Leicester, for example, which is now on 'Lockdown' -which seems to mean buildings rather than the town- the data gap is worth noting as it led to the Government taking this action-

"According to published data for Leicester, the city recorded just 80 new positive tests between June 13-26. But health secretary Matt Hancock revealed that there were in fact 944 as he announced the decision to tighten the lockdown in Leicester, closing non-essential shops and ordering schools to shut to all non-key worker pupils by Thursday. "
https://www.ft.com/content/301c847c-...b-8e66933d423a

I suggest that a similar gap in data exists in the US which means, if true, that your statistical profile is inaccurate, and significantly worse than was previously thought, though this does not in general terms undermine your claim that the health professionals have done a good job.

If we can agree on anything it is that the Politicians have failed, that their reluctance to act quickly has caused more suffering and death than might have been. The US shut down on 9/11, nothing entered, nothing left, and it did not take a week or six weeks to do that. New York City shut down though rather obviously Lower Manhattan was in such disarray there were no alternatives, But, and this is the key: it happened, and it was immediate.

A virus can kill more than a terrorist event, and it has. We have been failed by a class of polticians more concerned with their prestigious jobs and the vast amounts of money owned by their sponsors and supporters. At a time when the State rather than the market is the foundation and key driver of national economies, Boris Johnson, announcing an 'ambitious' policy to spend billions of tax payers money to 'Build, Build, Build', likening his economic rejuventation plan to Roosevelt's New Deal felt obliged to make this monumental declaration: "I am not a Communist".

But with Central Planning the basis of policy making, all we need is for someone to call 'Build, Build, Build' (but not Billed) as what it looks like: A Five Year Plan.

[blackchubby38]

As I understand it $1000 payments to people were made in the US but I don't know if that was a one off or how many qualified for the payments.

As it stands, in the UK around 9 million people are on furlough from work and being paid up to £2500 a month by the Government to sit at home. That scheme is due to last till the end of October, though there are changes to the company contributions to this starting from the beginning of August.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...e-on-furlough/

"As of June 28, 2020, approximately 9.3 million jobs, from 1.1 million different employers were furloughed in the United Kingdom as part of the government's job retention scheme. The scheme, introduced in response to the economic damage caused by the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, covers 80 percent of an employees' usual monthly wage, up to 2.5 thousand British pounds a month.
How much does the scheme cost?
The UK government is estimated to have spent 20.8 billion British pounds on the job retention scheme, with that figure expected to rise to 80 billion by the time the program stops in October 2020. To pay for this scheme, among others, it is likely the government will have to resort to levels of borrowing not seen since the Second World War."


If as suggested, the furlough scheme has cost the UK Government £20 billion to date then that's still far less than the estimated £500 billion they spent to bail out the banks.

In addition to the furlough scheme there's similar support for the self-employed, if they have the tax returns to prove it.

Remove major bills like rent/mortgage and the vast majority should be capable of living on that, particularly when "non-essential" shops were closed, so spending was almost all on food and other necessities.


There's already talk of raising taxes to begin clawing back the cost of the scheme.

A majority of Americans received a stimulus check ranging anywhere from $1,200 (like me) to $4,500. Some people spent the money wisely. Other used it to stimulate the economy by going shopping. There has been talk of doing another round of stimulus.

Unemployment benefits were also raised. I have heard stories about some people making more money being unemployed than from the job that they were working at.

[filghy2]

The EU has a population of 446 million people. Below is a graph from a week ago of the EU's new cases compared to ours. At the time we had 25000 new cases per day. We now have more than 40000 a day.

This article has an up to date chart which shows the difference very starkly. The US is currently getting 6 times the number of new cases per capita as Europe and 12 times as many as Canada.
https://www.vox.com/2020/7/1/2130880...s-polarization
I guess it's lucky for you Americans that your government has bought up all that remdesevir.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-...sivir/12414154

As I mentioned in the other thread, Australia had about the same number of cases per capita as the US in mid-March. Hence the initial conditions in terms of exposure to infections from abroad were similar. The advice from medical experts in both countries seems to have been broadly similar. That suggests that differences since then must be due to political decision-making and the willingness of the public to follow advice.

The outbreak in Melbourne I mentioned earlier has increased to over 70 new cases per day. The state authorities have reimposed lock-downs in the effected suburbs. Containing this virus is challenging even in an effective system where the politicians follow expert advice.

[filghy2]

When the pandemic first started, public health experts were giving differing views as to whether or not people should wear masks. It took almost month here in New York State before Governor Cuomo made wearing a mask in public mandatory. I think that's why it took so long for masks to become mandatory.

Interestingly, the medical authorities in Australia have not to date recommended wearing of masks by the general public. I would say no more than 10% of people I see in public have been wearing them. Obviously that's partly explained by the low infection rate, but whatever we did right to keep it low it wasn't mask-wearing.

[broncofan]

Obviously that's partly explained by the low infection rate, but whatever we did right to keep it low it wasn't mask-wearing.

Call it the rule of one. The public has to follow at least one public health recommendation to get any results.

It's not right for us to hoard Remdesivir. It's neither here nor there but it doesn't have a proven life-saving benefit and Dexamethasone does. But obviously that shouldn't be the approach to a pandemic, but it may be a portent of things to come with the vaccine and other treatments as well.

[blackchubby38]

I have a correction to make. There have actually been 128,574 deaths in the United States according to John Hopkins University and not 130, 122 that I previously posted.

[broncofan]

I have a correction to make. There have actually been 128,574 deaths in the United States according to John Hopkins University and not 130, 122 that I previously posted.

I appreciate the attention to detail. I wouldn't be overly concerned that you made the U.S. death toll look worse than it actually is since we've likely undercounted by a substantial amount.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/01/offi...udy-finds.html