I had this view as well, regarding testing a lot of people, prior to listening to the CDC comments. I thought for sure they would institute large scale testing of as many people as possible to do things like return to work, never mind attending a large gathering. But, according to them, that is not how they work to prevent viral outbreaks of any kind. And the reasons they gave made a lot of sense to me. Diagnostic testing is only valid for a short period of time. And antibody testing is a lot harder to get right so that its reliable.

So now, I think life will get back to normal, including large gatherings, and it won't depend on widespread testing of the general public. Again, the CDC is targeting 3%... and the vast majority of this testing will be of sick people and those in direct contact with them, especially in the healthcare industry.

Once large gatherings are allowed again in the US, and in many areas it may be as little as 6 weeks from now based on the criteria being laid out, there will obviously be the question of the "psychology" of the public. That is definitely hard to predict, but if I had to guess, the fear factor won't be very big. Particularly as we get further from the worst of it. My observation of people in my sphere is that they're ready to return to their normal lives as soon as possible.

As for tournament poker its a bit tricky. On the one hand it really isn't that much different from any large-scale gathering with regard to an airborne virus like COVID 19. So why would event organizers treat it differently? But on the other hand, its such an insignificant piece of the gaming pie, that gaming execs might not be in a rush to push for it. We'll see how it all plays out.

Nor, ....apparently near anyone who attends those events if the "reopening" is premature.

Post-vaccine ? If a vaccine is actually effective, then I'd share your "blasphemous" forecast post-vaccine ....)

If there is not widespread vaccination, see, the Biogen conference story . https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/u...rspreader.html

" The Biogen meeting was one of the earliest examples in the United States of what epidemiologists call “superspreading events” of Covid-19, where a small gathering of people leads to a huge number of infections. Unlike the most infamous clusters of cases stemming from a nursing home outside Seattle or a 40th birthday party in Connecticut, the Biogen cluster happened at a meeting of top health care professionals whose job it was to fight disease, not spread it.

“The smartest people in health care and drug development — and they were completely oblivious to the biggest thing that was about to shatter their world,” said John Carroll, editor of Endpoints News, which covers the biotech industry."

No, I don't think it's their objective, but it's what they want. They want to come outside which scientists tell us will rocket the spread of the disease so quickly that we won't be able to handle it with the existing resources. Now, the scientists could be wrong, I guess. But these same people are blaming WHO and China for all this. Well, answer this, how is what WHO and China did so bad, if the disease won't spread if we ignore it? I mean, Trump shut flights from China, if the few people coming from China are such a threat, what about life going on as normal with tens of thousands of infected Americans running around? Is Texas going to shut it's borders?

Also, your statement that this isn't a big deal for people who are healthy is total bullshit. You think a 0.1% death rate is something to sneeze at? You are all ****ing morons I swear to god.

Oh, **** I mentioned Trump. I get banned now.

None of what I'm about to post is meant to tell you that you're right or wrong about that, it's just to let you know what it looks like in a neighboring region.

What we heard today from our own provincial health officer, when she was asked about some of the larger events that happen here in the summer like the Pride parade (650,000 last year) and the PNE (exhibition with about 750,000, but over 2 weeks) is that they likely won't be happening, and she went farther than that:

To give that some context, we've done less of a mandated lockdown than many other provinces or states, but there's been pretty strong buy-in, and I don't think it looks all that much different here than most other states or provinces in reality. If anything, it seems we have less people out and about than some states with more complete lockdowns, but that's anecdotal. The point is, they tend to be a little more trusting here that we'll "do the right thing". Also, they are talking now about easing restrictions in a couple of weeks, and potentially *some* kids back in school in around a month, so it's not like there isn't hope on the near horizon. But in spite of that, she's telling us that large events over 4 months from now probably won't be happening, at least not without major changes.

So, as I said, this likely has no bearing on what you're going to experience. But it also wouldn't surprise me if some states take a similar approach. Then again, I wouldn't be shocked if none do either. I've tried to give up on being surprised by anything Covid-related any more.

I don't have a problem with anything you say or the way you say it. I know we have some shrinking flowers here and in the world at large who can't stand somebody with an opposing viewpoint. In any case, when you make a point which is different than my own, I don't take it as an existential threat to my happiness. That's the whole point of discussing topics in a forum. The things I have said are definitely in reference to what the US government is putting forth and I would not be at all surprised if there are differences elsewhere, including somewhere as close as Canada.

Anyhow, I've had plenty of free time on my hands, so I've tried to get a handle on exactly how dangerous covid-19 is. The official story in the US is that it has an IFR of about 1% which would make it 10x as deadly as seasonal flu. That seems like a reasonable and scary number, but its hard to tell anything when you're in the middle of a pandemic and there hasn't been large-scale antibody testing going on to find out exactly how widespread the virus is. The following is actually a pretty good article which discusses the problem with looking at CFR and making public policy decisions based on it...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/healt...571_story.html

The article mentions a study found here:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....14.20062463v1

which looked at antibody testing in California and estimates that between 50-85 times more people have been infected than the current confirmed case reports. That is only one study, in one geographic region, and the sheer variance in the results should tell you that there is nothing definitive about it. But think about that number. Even if the reality is only 10x instead of 50x+, that would mean the IFR in the US would only be about .5%. A lot less scary of a number.

These sorts of numbers lead me to believe when all is said and done, this virus will turn out to be a lot less deadly overall than was feared. But its disproportionate effect on older people or unhealthy people should not be overlooked. Its almost like it was designed to thin the heard, which is a scary though in itself.

I live in a highly impacted area. I also live in an area where government plays a relatively large role in people's lives compared to other areas, for the better and for the worse. I do not expect life to get back to anything close to normal here till mid-summer at the earliest. But all I have to do is look at what's going on in many, many other places in the US (its an enormous country) and see a very different picture. I have to say, I'd be really surprised if this wasn't also the case in Canada, which is an even larger country with far fewer people in it. But still, I do believe Canadians are a bit of a different lot from Americans. That is neither a compliment nor an insult.

The fact that the biogen healthcare workers became "super-spreaders" is ironic, but not at all illustrative of the world we live in now with respect to testing and contact tracing, not to mention personal behavior. Sick people are far less likely to get together with others and are far more likely to be tested now than back in late feb/early march.

That being said, it is clear the most dangerous thing about COVID 19 is its affect on the elderly and people with underlying conditions. Even with the newly issued US guidance where large gatherings will be allowed in the foreseeable (and likely, close, depending on where you live) future, they still stipulate that the most at risk will want to take extra precautions... including not attending large gatherings. This will make large gatherings somewhat less large, to be sure.

You already see restricted travel within the US. I'm sure you will see more as regions cautiously open up, and each state will likely do things a little differently depending on their own circumstances.

if the IFR ends up being .1%, this will go down as one of the biggest "hoaxes", to borrow an oft-used term by some, in recent human history. No, that level of deadliness is nothing to sneeze at. But neither would it be something to shut down the world and cause enormous misery over.

BTW, IFR is a measure of how deadly a disease is. To some degree it is affected by the quality of one's access to healthcare, but it has little to do with the existence of shutdowns or mitigation efforts. If the IFR for Covid 19 ends up being anyone near .1%, there will surely be hell to pay amongst our leaders and public health policy advocates.

Check out the daily cases graph for Iran...

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/a...23467b48e9ecf6

All these statistics are highly questionable since different countries are using different criteria, but just look at how smooth that daily cases graph is for Iran compared to almost every other country (besides China, which also has a strikingly smooth graph), Its almost as if the numbers are being completely made up.

That's kind of the whole point of quarantining yourself. If you are a high risk person you should not have contact with anyone whom may have the virus. Whether low risk people are in quarantine or not will have no impact on you. It doesn't make you any more or less safe and that was never the purpose of the lockdown anyway. It was to flatten the curve so not to overrun hospitalizations and supplies.

Until a vaccine (or some type of cure) is found a lockdown only postpones eventual infections. The virus will be waiting for us when we come out (for those that haven't had it yet). Without the vaccine the only other way to greatly minimize the risk for the high risk people is through herd immunity (greatly reduce the remaining hosts). I think in hindsight it was a mistake to do this lockdown. The hospitalization rationale appears to have been overblown so what did we gain? We just delayed herd immunity which makes it worse for high risk people.

How does the biogen meeting have anything to do with what I was saying?

"It's not their objective but it's what they want".....hmm

Who said the virus won't spread if we ignore it? If you are referring to folks in favor of herd immunity they are saying the opposite. The virus will naturally spread and if only the low risk people are catching it than they will recover without hospitalizations (or a minimal hospitalizations) and eventually make it safer for high risk people to begin leaving quarantine

I can't say this any plainer than I have (high risk = quarantine / low risk = get on with life). I'm not being cavalier but this isn't rocket science.

I've never been clear on some aspects of testing, namely as it relates to using the data to reopen the country. I've heard both healthcare and political professionals (for heath & economic perspectives) say we need testing before we can reopen the country. Short of mass testing for herd immunity I'm not clear what the results can tell us that would impact that decision. Your mention of the CDC target of 3% is interesting because it rules out mass testing so I'm curious what they (CDC, administration, etc) hope to see from such a small sample to give the green light. To be clear, I'm in favor of beginning the process to reopen in the near future regardless of testing...but I may be missing something.

I’m not a researcher or epidemiologist, I’m just a nurse practitioner working in a large academic hospital with lots of COVID cases. Clearly what I’m about to post is anecdotal based exclusively on my own experience which is limited to a few hundred cases I’ve seen only in hospitalized patients. From what I hear from lay people, many of them think that really only elderly people are at risk of serious complications. While the elderly don’t fare too well, I can tell you most of the cases I’ve seen have not been elderly people. Most are under 60 years of age. And they are sicker, on average, than patients hospitalized with the flu. Also, we are learning that it may actually harm the lungs ina different manner than we previously thought. Lastly, it seems people may be able to get reinfected.

i think vegas is done for the rest of the year. how can they really think about reopening mid may is beyond my belief.

WYNN LAS VEGAS HEALTH & SANITATION PROGRAM
https://www.visitwynn.com/documents/...ealth-Plan.pdf

Some of the key points:

Thermal Cameras. Points of entry will be limited to allow our security team to conduct noninvasive temperature checks utilizing thermal cameras. Anyone displaying a temperature over 100.0°F will be taken to a private area for a secondary temporal temperature screening. Employees or guests confirmed to have a temperature over 100.0°F will not be allowed entry to the property and will be directed towards appropriate medical care.

The Guest Journey
Guest Arrival
A security officer will greet each visitor to the resort. Visitors will be screened and asked to use hand sanitizer and to wear a mask (which will be provided by the resort). Appropriate signage will also be prominently displayed outlining proper mask usage and current physical distancing practices in use throughout the resort.

Guest Sanitation Amenities
a) Each guest will receive an amenity bag during check-in containing masks, hand
sanitizer and a COVID-19 awareness card.
b) A spray bottle of sanitizer or wipes will be provided in each room for guest
use (subject to availability and stored out of reach of small children).


11 Poker Operations
Cleaning & Sanitizing Protocol
a) Supervisors to sanitize table game rails after each customer leaves (ongoing)
b) Supervisors to sanitize each chair area after a customer leaves (ongoing)
c) Supervisors to sanitize the outside of shufflers every hour; inside to be cleaned once
per week
d) Supervisors to sanitize podiums at least once per hour including phones, computers,
Veridocs, all hard surface and cabinetry
e) Dealers to sanitize in table rating units each time they enter a game
f) Dealers to sanitize toke boxes
g) Chip sanitation solutions being reviewed – pending expert guidance
Physical Distancing Protocol
a) Every other table open and tables to be staggered
b) Maximum seating to be established based on expert guidance
c) Dealers to verbally give breaks instead of “tapping in” and maintain appropriate
separation
Guest Considerations
a) Guests will be reminded to sanitize their hands prior to the start of play
b) Food service protocols to be reviewed

Is this your latest attempt at saying "It's just like flu" without uttering those words?
I don't know about you, but if I was governor of a state where a new disease was killing twice as many people as all other causes added together, I'd consider it extremely deadly, and would take extreme measures to try and stop its growth. This level of deadliness is unprecedented in recent times. If the IFR is 0.1% why do the graphs look like this?

Or this:


Source for graphs: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publi...ashes-not-like

Looks like they’re doing nothing about sanitizing the cards, which I understand would be very difficult, but that would seem to be a primary mechanism for spreading the virus among the players and dealers. Even if they sanitize the chips, that doesn’t seem like it will help much as soon as they continuously change hands during play.

I’m not saying they shouldn’t make plans to try to limit spread of the virus, but a lot of it seems to be more for show given that everyone will be touching the same cards and chips anyway.

Having read a lot of these comments i have come to one conclusion.
Let stupid be stupid, why try to srgue with people from both sides that are so obviously stuck to their own opinion that nothing will change it.
It is obvious that this virus will cause significant social and economic changes going forward and it is my hope that i do not hav e to listen to one of the "its all blown out of proportion" side getting very emotional about how the government or their neighbour etc did not do enough to protect them if one of their close family contracts the virus and has the worst case scenario.
In my experience it is the ones who fight government / offical control and direction (advice) the most and openly go against them who change sides so abruptly and become the loudest and most aggressive enforcers of the rules. In this case having parties / meeting in groups etc.

Also be aware there are many employers with a big stake in the game being very aggressive about dropping the current mesures and opening up again. Remember it will not be them or their families in the closely packed office ???

You should check out the US Covid-19 task force press conference from last Thursday. I'd provide a link if i had one handy but it should possible to find on youtube, or perhaps even on some government website. Anyhow, skip the Trump part if that's not your cup of tea or all you're interested is testing. All of the big guns when it comes to the "healthcare" side of the taskforce talked in varying detail about testing.

It came as a surprise to me, but it turns out when the CDC is attempting to avoid viral outbreaks, they don't go about doing a massive amount of testing (at least massive compared to the sorts of numbers that are likely in the heads of individuals, including governors). The key takeaway for me was... 1) they test sick people. 2) they test people in contact with sick people (either because of the nature of their work or through contact tracing) and 3) they test random people in high-risk populations, like inner cities and indigenous.

But they don't go about doing tons of testing on random healthy people just to see if they have the virus. And the reason was pretty clear when you think about it... you can test negative and then contract the virus 5 minutes later. So much for the validity of your test.

They do a second type of testing for antibodies and it wasn't clear to me what sort of scope they do, but they did mention that this was much harder to do this type of testing accurately and I got the impression that it would be done largely as an academic pursuit, not one meant to drive policy. Again, this came as quite a surprise to me. i thought for sure antibody tests would be the lynchpin for re-opening since it might identify who was immune. Not so much, at least from what I gleaned from the press conference.

So the upshot is... all of these healthcare-focused folks have signed off on (and likely wrote) the phased re-opening plans put for by the US government. And they are doing so in a testing environment which isn't nearly as extensive as I think people believe. Now, certainly the amount of testing they are going to do in a short period of time is massive. Its just not nearly the level I believe people think it will be.

And the governors aren't helping. I keep hearing them say... we aren't re-opening until there is much more testing available. Well, outside of some logistical hurdles which certainly need to be crossed, according to the CDC there is enough testing capacity in all but 2 states in the union right now for the the next month. And they are rapidly increasing that capacity every single day, as can clearly be seen by where we are today compared to a month ago in regard to testing. So, again, if people are looking to know what the reality of thigs is, I really think they should be looking towards CDC officials more and less towards elected officials. Most talking heads have been saying this the whole time in an effort to either discredit or blame certain elected officials for whatever. Ok, why change now? The CDC has pretty much put forth a pretty logical and scientifically sound plan. Governors should follow it. And the public should trust in it until such time as they change it.

1) You really do have a tough time with reading comprehension. I'm trying to be kind and I'm not insinuating anything about your intelligence. Maye you just read stuff too fast, have a reaction, and go ahead and reply.

If you read my post, I was replying to a guy who said something along the lines of ".1% death rate is nothing to sneeze at". Nowhere did I say that I think covid-19 has a .1% IFR. In fact I have talked about the 1% figure being generally accepted and how this is about 10x worse than seasonal flu.

I have found some articles recently which challenge that 1% number and postulate that the IFR may be significantly smaller. This is just speculation at this point, since the studies involved have not been large enough. Its interesting, but not worth having a strong opinion about one way or the other. In any case, if you're going to respond to something I say, please actually respond to what I say instead of whatever thoughts are going on in your head at that time. If you just want to put forth your thoughts, be my guest. But don't do it in a response to me.

2) The graphs you show are a reflection of CFR (actual case deaths), not IFR. The former thing is interesting, but not a particularly valid way to judge the deadliness of a virus, especial mid-pandemic when the underlying numbers are so sketchy. If you wand to comment on how deadly something is, you have to use IFR. As I mentioned, it is generally believed that Covid-19 is about 1%. That's really high (compared to flu), and certainly something worth taking significant action over. But we don't even know what the IFR will end up being. There is a fair bit of speculation and some scientific research pointing to the idea that there are many times more people who were infected but did not get tested due to mild or no symptoms (or lack of access to testing). If that turns out to be true, and the IFR does get down into the flu-realm, then I think there will be hell to pay. It won't be fair because elected officials can only react to what's in front of them, not speculation. But if the IFR turns out to be in the realm of .1%, the proper course of action would have been to try and isolate the elderly and high-risk individuals and for the vast majority of everyone else, move on. But that is 20/20 hindsight, something I am not fond of. However, the actions governments take when the virus returns in 8 months will likely be very different than now for this very reason.

Ok, stop with the insults unless you want to be exiled from the thread.

The point of mass testing of healthy people isn’t to identify which individuals have to virus, it’s to determine the rough proportion who have the virus to better estimate lethality and determine how close we are to herd immunity.

Also in that report:

"Assuming in mid- to late-May we are still in line with the benchmarks, slowly begin to reopen the Las Vegas strip with extensive safety measures in place"

I don't think there is evidence for this statement. Just check out the CDC site where they discuss transmission:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...d-spreads.html

"It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes. This is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads, but we are still learning more about this virus."

They downplay transmission through physical contact. This is an airborne virus transmitted primarily through droplets that come out of one person and go into another in a relatively direct way.

I think recommendations about sanitization make sense from a "better safe than sorry" standpoint. But I really feel like this part of it is overblown. If you sit at a gaming table next to someone who is infected, you are significantly more likely to become infected if they cough in your general area and you inhale the droplets, than if they cough in their hand, touch a card, and then you touch the card. Its probably orders of magnitude more likely. I'm not prepared to say all of the sanitization efforts being put forth are for nothing, but there doesn't appear to be solid evidence that this mode of transmission is the key. So until this evidence exists, why are you just assuming it to be true?

You don't have to believe or not believe anything. Nor do you have to read their minds. Just look at the guidelines they are following. If they meet the guidelines, they will reopen. If they don't they won't. That way you can know exactly why something is happening instead of relying on intuition, mind-reading, belief, etc.

I’m curious, what proportion of people you are treating with serious complications from the virus are children?