And then what do we do?
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The elephant in the room, even if the IHME model is correct, is this: Once the decline in cases is a real thing, how do we prevent another spike when things loosen up?
Zeke Emmanuel says that the country should remain locked down for another 12-18 months to prevent another surge.
Realistically, COVID-19 will be here for the next 18 months or more. We will not be able to return to normalcy until we find a vaccine or effective medications. I know that's dreadful news to hear. How are people supposed to find work if this goes on in some form for a year and a half? Is all that economic pain worth trying to stop COVID-19? The truth is we have no choice.
If we prematurely end that physical distancing and the other measures keeping it at bay, deaths could skyrocket into the hundreds of thousands if not a million. We cannot return to normal until there's a vaccine. Conferences, concerts, sporting events, religious services, dinner in a restaurant, none of that will resume until we find a vaccine, a treatment, or a cure.
One thing I've learned as a cancer doctor is that it's wrong to paint an overly rosy picture in order to maintain a patient's hope. It's wrong because it fails. It's false. Biology and disease are formidable opponents that inevitably tell us the truth. We cannot relieve the oppression of this pandemic until we are realistic. We need to prepare ourselves for this to last 18 months or so and for the toll that it will take. We need to develop a long-term solution based on those facts. It has to account for what we are losing while this fight goes on, things like schooling and income and contact with our friends and extended family.
The crisis is not going to go away in a few weeks or after the 30-day plan comes to an end. Although COVID-19 is affecting us in different ways, we have to be up to it and fight together.
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That's what I've been saying. Look at the county graphs on the social distancing score site: if any spike happens after we "go back to normal," it'll take us two weeks before we have any evidence at all. Two weeks. Look at what happened to Italy and New York in the first 2 weeks.
I say what we do is adopt the Amazon model of going back to work. No social distancing = you're fired.
In my area, you're guaranteed to have another spike. A massive one. There are hundreds of restaurants, all within very few city blocks of each other. Open those back up, go "back to normal" with some nice springtime lunch specials and I guarantee you, by the time we even know something happened we'll be the new New York.
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Agreed. I don't much care when they sound all clear. My all clear will be when this thing is whipped, not just flattened.
I'm in it for the long haul and frankly, other than going to restaurants and having friends over for dinner it doesn't affect my life all that much. I'm back to 30-60 minutes a day on the piano, picking up my bass and guitar again, cooking, etc. Still doing 30 minutes a day of cardio. I can still get the groceries I want either delivered or pickup with no contact., and most things I buy are online anyway.
We won't get gummint stimulus money until summer, but by then we will know who to give it to.
I will miss having friends for dinner the most.
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Yeah I can't afford to either.
It's trickier for me since a have a son. Can I keep him out of school for an entire year? I mean, sure, I can. But do I want to? Also will Rachel need to either quit or go back to work at some point?
She could quit, we could homeschool the boy indefinitely. But I haven't ruled out the idea of me getting an apartment and staying self quarantined while R and the boy re integrate into some 'test and trace' scheme.
I'm a ways from having to figure that out. One thing I'll look at is how high-functioning transplant patients do. I only know one Alpha with a lung transplant who contracted COVID-19 so far, and she died 9 days ago.
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If we lock the country down for 18 months, we don't have a country. We can mitigate as much as possible, but the hard reality is that some people are going to die.
Might be me, for all I know...
Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
You don't stay locked down, you slowly open up into a society with a robust testing and contact tracing capability.
Unless you have idiots as leaders then you under invest in that, open up anyway and have another big wave.
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@Jolly Here's another cold reality: it doesn't matter. The economy is going to take an epic pummeling no matter what we do.
Stay locked down? Tanked economy. Everybody go back to work? Shitloads of people get sick or die. Millions will be out of work for about a month. The toll on our health care systems would be incredible. Many of those out of work for their recovery will lose their jobs. Tanked economy.
Please love yourself.
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@Aqua-Letifer said in And then what do we do?:
@Jolly Here's another cold reality: it doesn't matter. The economy is going to take an epic pummeling no matter what we do.
Stay locked down? Tanked economy. Everybody go back to work? Shitloads of people get sick or die. Millions will be out of work for about a month. The toll on our health care systems would be incredible. Many of those out of work for their recovery will lose their jobs. Tanked economy.
There's pummeling and there's pummeling. Right now, we're running on government money, but that is not a long term option. As it is, I'm worried about hyperinflation, if this current situation causes massive harm to the dollar.
We don't go back to work and you're looking at Great Depression 2.
Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
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Zeke was the guy who said everyone over 75 should die. I would love for him to reconcile that with his save the world thoughts.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/10/why-i-hope-to-die-at-75/379329/
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Patience, gentlemen. Easter is but four days away.
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You need food to be raised, you need pharmaceuticals to be produced, you need equipment to be manufactured, you need these goods to be shipped and you need people to ship them, meaning you need vehicles, mechanics, fuel, automotive parts to keep the fleet running, warehouses, personnel, equipment. That equipment will need to be maintained... People are about to discover leaky roofs that will need replaced. I don’t think a 44 year old account executive is going to be able to do it himself, meaning he will need to hire people. He won’t be able to hire someone on the 1200 stimulus check.
3 month shutdown? Impossible So don’t waste your time worrying about what can’t and won’t happen and work towards mitigating what can and will happen.
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That's coming. It's not new technology and I suspect if the patent can be waived on it, the wholesale price could be less than $1/test. That's out-the-door reportable.
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What a Prolonged Shutdown Will Cost in Human Life
A suicide spike is almost certain. One study in Taiwan indicated a 10% increase in the unemployment rate yielded approximately 30,000 suicides annually. Another global study linked the 2008 recession to a 20% to 30% increase in the relative risk of suicides.
We already had a suicide epidemic in this country before the virus, with nearly 50,000 Americans taking their own lives, and an additional estimated 1.4 million attempting to do so, in 2018 alone.
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis estimates over 52 million will be laid off just by the second quarter of 2020, for a 32.1% unemployment rate, far higher than Great Depression estimates of 20% to 25% unemployment. Should these predictions materialize, and if history can be our guide, we are going to lose tens of thousands of American lives to suicide ... or more, if these impacts of a three-month shutdown were extended to realize Emanuel’s plan of 12-18 months of shutdown.
After only a few weeks of lockdown, calls to crisis hotlines increased from 1,000 to 25,000 a day in Indiana and 8,900% (Los Angeles), with the latter reporting that one in five calls express “suicidal desire.”
Expect an increase in heart attacks, too. Disruption-related stress attacks the heart. The National Institutes of Health reported that just the one-hour, fully anticipated Daylight Savings Time change correlates with a 24% increase in daily acute myocardial infarction (“AMI” or “heart attack”). What will be the increase in heart attacks when the disruption to our lives is not just one hour, but instead 12 to 18 months?
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Don't know about suicides, but I've read where the traffic on mental health hotlines has exploded.
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It absolutely has. I don't know too many psychologists (Jolly would prob'ly call them headshrinkers. Tell me I'm wrong!
), but they've all mentioned how freaking busy they are now with teleconferences with patients.Please love yourself.
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@Aqua-Letifer said in And then what do we do?:
It absolutely has. I don't know too many psychologists (Jolly would prob'ly call them headshrinkers. Tell me I'm wrong!
), but they've all mentioned how freaking busy they are now with teleconferences with patients.City living when you can't go anywhere is depressing.
