shoshin

Yes. Mortality is not the best metric to measure success in dealing with this and reopening. It’s a good measure to know for sure because if it’s high then we have more serious consequences for spread of Covid. It’s just not the measure that makes sense to control opening. Currently mortality is the only decent measure of progress we have but it’s a big macro number not without its own problems.

There are no good numbers for that nationally and it would be a dumb national number to average across the country. What I was saying is that hospitalization rate or ICU beds available would be probably the best measure of entry into and progression through phased opening, regionally. For example, if your region has 10% capacity or less, close because things are about to get dire, 10-20, open with lots of restrictions. 20-40, open with fewer restrictions. Etc. That ensures the health care system can deal with this. If Covid is going to be around for a while and it clearly is, health care is going to be the limiting resource. It would seem that defining the staged opening with respect to that makes the most sense. In my area, we still have a fair amount of capacity even though deaths are steady, but our governor has defined phased opening according to positive tests per population, which is a B word to achieve especially as testing capacity increases (hopefully). So our healthcare system will have massive capacity long before we ever reach our positive test threshold.

Comorbidity drives hospitalizations as was covered well in the Time article earlier this week. But making sure our hospitals have capacity to deal with Covid and regular patients is probably the best metric for being open and how much to be open.

Your post is a good one with respect to mortality stats. The hospitalization rate concerns me a lot more.

Are you going support that or just leave it there without facts? Most of the closed states could enter phase 1 under those guidelines now (except maybe the larger cities) but remain closed or have much more stringent requirements in place for opening. I prefer the Trump guidelines over any plan I’ve seen from a state. If states would follow the guidelines, they could be opening their economies, albeit carefully.

The guidelines are out there. No one seems to be following them.

It seemed like you were talking about fearing for the food supply and that you thought people were getting reinfected like they were before. But good that you’re being rational.

People who recover developed antibodies. Most “reinfections” as you call them have been re-detections and almost wholly without symptoms. Don’t spread panic my man.

Yep. You don’t need a great 40 time to get 12 yards. Breakaway speed at RB is almost meaningless.

Overwhelming the healthcare system is really the thing to watch closely. There are not a lot of good national stats on this but governors should have good regional data. My wife’s healthcare system shares that info internally but widely daily. Zero downwards trend for Covid cases or beds in a system that is shut down for all non-essential surgery. The curve flattened and that was the goal. Outside of NYC Metro, the cases may be as high as 5%, which means we have a long ways to go. A slow and phased reopening like the Trump guidelines that almost no one seems interested in following guarantees that curve stays flat (flat does not mean cases go to zero...it means cases remain but are manageable) and we can reopen.

You’re defending what he said like he meant it and knows about using a nebulizer (not injection obviously). Trump was spitballing about injecting surface disinfectants (!!!) in a press conference with ratings higher than American Idol. When called on it, he said he was being sarcastic, something none of his defenders including you suggested because he’s clearly just backpedaling out of justified embarrassment. It’s the schoolyard bully taking a blow right to the chin. Why did Trump take his ball and go home yesterday? He looked silly and people were mocking him. We move on but he got what he deserved for a dumb idea on a topic he should be well read on by now.

You answered a rhetorical question. This is a relevant thread to the news and could be pretty good without the message board flexing and bullying. Every morning it tends to start out strong and then goes off a cliff in a few hours.

Do you think something gives you the right to condescend to people?

Trump: I just heard how to kill the virus. Can we inject disinfectants or put light under the skin to cure the disease? Can you scientists spend some time looking into this. Scientists: Jesus Christ dude. You do your job, let us do our jobs. OK?

And you think Trump should guide our scientists by telling them to look into, not ingesting, but injecting disinfectants or UV light to treat Covid-19. Here's something Gal: You can kill pretty much any virus or bacteria with bleach and fewer but still most with UV. Perhaps the scientists have this topic, which is well known, covered. Trump needs to defer on issues of science if he's going to make such stupid comments. That's all. Not everyone is an expert and some people are really dumb on science. He's one of those people.

No, but it matters what he says. When he advocates for the guidelines, I am 150% behind him and have been. Here are his words, no hyperbole needed. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Thank you very much. So I asked Bill a question that probably some of you are thinking of if you are totally into that world which I find to be very interesting. So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light and I think you said that hasn't been checked but you are going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body which you can do either through the skin or in some other way and I think you said you were going to test that too. It sounds interesting.Right. And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number (INAUDIBLE) interesting to check that so that you are going to have to use medical doctors with but it sounds interesting to me so we will see but the whole concept of the light the way it kills it in one minute that's--that's pretty powerful. Steve, please.

Please stop. I'm dismissing his statements because he made moronic statements, not because of who he is. He demonstrated that the has no understanding of the virus vs the disease, and wasn't listening to the comments made before he got up and talked. He should either not talk science when he's there, or just not be there.

And injecting disinfectants. Both are incredibly stupid for treating Covid-19, but I guess they would kill SARS-COV-2! Can you imagine how hard the scientists must try to coach him behind the scenes. The things he must suggest there?

Disinfectants too. Killing SARS-COV-2 is pretty easy. Stopping Covid-19 not so much, and definitely not by injecting bleach or shining a light below the skin. It hurts the mind to continue talking about this. Thanks Trump. I bowed out of the strange turn of this conversation but it was being had over here on the same point.

Do you feel like you're winning by making this point?

I bet this video captures a lot of Fauci/Birx moments behind the scenes: Trump recommended injection of surface disinfectants, not ingestion, if it makes you feel better.

Biden has way worse issues than Trump, but I'm already cringing.

This wasn't a grammar issue where he misused "which" and should have said "that." He was having a moment of lazy/magical thinking. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Thank you very much. So I asked Bill a question that probably some of you are thinking of if you are totally into that world which I find to be very interesting. So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light and I think you said that hasn't been checked but you are going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body which you can do either through the skin or in some other way and I think you said you were going to test that too. It sounds interesting.Right. And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number (INAUDIBLE) interesting to check that so that you are going to have to use medical doctors with but it sounds interesting to me so we will see but the whole concept of the light the way it kills it in one minute that's--that's pretty powerful. Steve, please.

You've already put down science as political so let's try this another way using math. After weeks of the total US deaths being the same and NY/NJ making up 50-60% of the total US deaths, yesterday NY and NJ made up about 35%...but the total deaths are about the same. What that should tell you is that those "triple digit states" weren't triple digits two weeks ago and have risen as NY/NJ has fallen. Another way to look at that is what was once mostly a NY Metro problem is now more widely a problem for other regions. It's overkill but it was literally the only thing we could do to get ahead of this for our health systems, especially in bigger metro areas. Do you think this will come back starting in the fall like the scientists think?

Science schmience is your response? Shm-reduplication is more effective in Looney Toons than pandemic debate. I didn't realize that science was party-affiliated.