It's a scary day indeed when I agree with every point TS makes in a post. Though he will probably find a way to argue endlessly how I am wrong.

The world is not going to allow another shut down.

The first shut down length wise was idiotic enough. 3 months? Insanity.

We could have physically distanced + wear masks since day 1, or even day 14, or day 30.

It is important to not act like efforts have to be all or none.

We do all sorts of things from speed limits to seat belts to help reduce the death toll in car crashes. Sensible measures to combat and reduce while accepting some risk.

Covid can and should have a similar response at this point. Earlier we did not know enough and the systems were not prepared for the type of onslaught that would have assailed it had they not shut down and given us time to lower the spread, clear the hospitals, and get supplies and therapeutic knowledge.

Now we are much more ready with all those things so full shut downs should not be needed outside some extreme circumstances but choking off certain activities when spiking (bars, etc) may be needed.

Thanks. What I'm wondering now is whether the wildfire smoke along the West Coast will be a super-spreader event.

It's replicating winter conditions with less sunlight, cooler weather, and everybody staying indoors with windows closed.

Smoke particles carry the virus and few people have sealed rooms, so some smoke is getting into their homes.

Will we see hospitalizations and deaths skyrocket in a few weeks? I don't think so, but it's possible.

If it doesn't happen is that a pretty good sign that most people already have lingering t-cell immunity and winter won't be that bad?

What's dumb about this? This summer has been amazing for corona containment in the US. It's burned through a large proportion of the most socially active nodes in most major US cities.

In the first wave through blue states, it burned through 30% of some suburbs. Most of the high spread socially infected nodes and high-spread groups (like minorities) as well as the least socially responsible/most touchy feely are now immune. High spread minority suburbs like Kings and Queens hit 30% immunity rates; that's enough to reduce R from 3 to 1.8 or so and 1.3 or so with minor social distancing. That's the difference between hospitals overflowing and a slow manageable burn that infects relatively few people all winter.

In the southern wave in summer it inoculated many of the young and socially active and minorities in the southern states (the highest spreaders), with the lowest possible death rates.

R has been reduced enough that the US probably does not have to shut back down; some minor distancing will be enough to keep it manageable. Europe is in a far worse situation for the coming winter. It's burnt through too few (with a high death rate) such that they've barely changed R and are staring at a big second wave.

TS is just riding the wave of USA its figures going down for a while now while Europe figures are going up. Wait until USA is ****ed again, and he blames the dems not distancing or something.

Actually I'm talking about the future/winter wave. Do you disagree with the above?

And yes it's hilarious that the self righteous Euroclowns are now getting clobbered by the virus while the US numbers go down (the US basically played out the UK SAGE expert working group advice on how to avoid a devastating winter second wave, while Europe patted themselves on the back), but that has exactly zero to do with my post above. That's your own insecurity.

I asked you earlier when we can look back at your USA winter claims and see if they were accurate and you ignored that.

I'm interested in opinions about what will happen, not personalities or being right. I don't understand that question; obviously we'll know about how winter has gone when winter is at a good part of the way through? I truly don't understand the question.

Europe got complacent because they have a cowed/unfree/compliant populace they could do contact tracing on, but that's really broken down in places like France as the population has gotten fatigued of it all with their absurd lockdown and just want to live. The thing about contact tracing is that once it spreads enough, the entire contact tracing system becomes overwhelmed and useless. If that happens in winter then Europe is screwed and back into lockdown with a lot more deaths. The US on the other hand has always had a shitty contact tracing system due to very low population compliance with tracing efforts (people are free and not cowed), so a far larger portion of the US has now been inoculated with a low death rate. I struggle to see how you and Shuffle don't see why that puts the US in a much better situation come winter.

"Most child molesters love'em!" LOL. I will admit though, having to wear a mask all day at school would suck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MByqtRplho

Ok so explain further.

The risk of covid is not just the trend (who is shrinking versus who is growing) but also the baseline of each which is even more important.

The US baseline of adding ~30k cases a day (and falling if that is in fact accurate and not manipulated data) is significantly higher than other major European cities (Spain ~9k, France ~8k, Uk ~3k, Germany ~1.6k, Italy ~1.2k). You couple that with the Active Cases data and the US at ~2.5MM, again dominating the rest and you have a whole bunch of infected and new cases walking around looking for the next host.

So I would agree with the part of your theory that if the US has burned out so many cases that new hosts will be hard to find and the numbers will just drop, that could be good for the US, but what is the data behind your estimates of that?

That said, if these absolute numbers remain this high and spike from there this winter, I don't think vulnerable people will be able to hide enough in the US. They still must get out for some needs and with such high absolute numbers walking around and breathing and contacting things, I see another significant wave of deaths coming to the US.

Whether the US or Europe will be worse, I have no comment but I would personally wager a small bet the US will be, simply because I don't see those absolute numbers coming down fast enough.

Numbers may not necessarily drop, that is a bit different. If you have two theoretical scenarios A) 0.001% of the population has been infected. B) 20% of the population has been infected. If both scenarios have the EXACT SAME environmental scenarios/factors (deterministic model where things play out the exact same in both scenarios) the R naught would inherently be lower in scenario B. Now of course, this does not tell you how much lower the R would actually be comparatively speaking. More people the virus can infect % wise in a population = higher R comparatively speaking if all environmental factors are the EXACT SAME. It's just basic intuitive math.

Obviously everyone concentrates on the number of deaths but we should really include the long term side effects of contracting covid-19 when discussing letting it run through young populations/opening up/economies etc. There is almost certainly plenty of young individuals, who were asymptomatic, that are going to have long term consequences of this disease.

Paraphrasing here but didn't a recent German study show something like 70% of people who had tested positive showed some form of cardiac damage (including those who were asymptomatic)? Letting it run through the young seems a horrible idea considering the obvious lack of understanding.

Sure I get all that.

But what also matters is absolute numbers.

If you have ~2.5MM active cases walking around the cities and adding ~30k cases a day but that number is declining and the R is dropping...

and you compare that to a place that has a fraction of the active cases and is still adding less total cases, but the R is rising it does not mean that Case 1 will have better outcomes than Case 2 during a short duration of time (fall/winter).

Over time if that trend continues, yes. But with Fall/Winter so close the absolute numbers may well be far more impactful and the US could do far worse.

I've raised that constantly, but pointed out the data is still thin on that. But yes Covid may prove to be the gift that keeps on giving. The perfect human killer.

Wipes out those vulnerable and with pre-existing conditions the first time, but leaves a next wave of survivors now gifted with pre-existing conditions for its next pass in subsequent years. And so on and so on.

This is completely wrong. The baseline is almost irrelevant and it's only the R that matters. Why? Because exponentiation is far more powerful. Let's say the US has 5x the active cases of Europe right now. Let's say some moderate level of distancing remains (which it will).

After 15 weeks of late fall and winter:

100,000 * 1.8^ 15 = 674 M (the entire population of Europe)
500,000 * 1.2^15 = 7.7M (not many people at all)

The difference caused by partial immunity is incredible. A lot of key areas in the US are at 20% infected, some of the very high spread communities like minorities over 30%, and the effect on R is even higher - like 30-50% - due to the fact that it's the most social/active/irresponsible nodes now immune. Thus if R is 3 without distancing it's going to be at 0.5-1 lower in the US. That's huge. the difference between a hospitals-overwhelmed hard lockdown pandemic and a manageable slow burn.

This has all been modeled by the UK influenza expert group in the UK back in March; here is what I've described above in graph form according to expert influenza modellers:



You can see how the "burn through in a manageable way in summer" second wave is far less severe, and total deaths far lower, than the "get it very low through summer" strategy that Europe followed.

What's more, the US situation can easily be contained by marginally increasing restrictions (see for example Texas and Florida among others which went into rapid decline when this was done) in a manageable way that doesn't mess up lives and economies. That option isn't open to the lower immunity, higher R communities come winter.

People don't intuitively understand exponential growth which is why most people (including experts) comically screwed up the analysis and impact of this when it was first spreading. You're making the same mistake above.

I don't get why you're saying there are "almost certainly plenty" who are going to be hit hard long term. I don't think there is evidence for that at this stage. There are a few scary anecdotes and some questionable studies, but there isn't evidence of widespread damage at this point. I would guess the lack of exercise, normal life and socializing from distancing and lockdowns will have a greater long term impact on the young than corona will. By a big margin.

And cognitive abnormalities in around 50%. Viruses mess up the body in the body in general, coming up as all kinds of abnormalities fora while, but young people generally heal.

I'm very much in favor of eradication (I wanted it to begin with when it was still easy and possible), but in a place like the US where the populace doesn't comply and can't be made to, and the cat is this far out of the bag, burning through the willing young is the best option of what remains once eradication is off the table.

Thought this would be of interest to some. Basically a write-up for hospitals on how to treat this. The MATH+ protocol I've heard mentioned a bunch here and there so it's getting used to some degree.

https://www.evms.edu/media/evms_publ...9_Protocol.pdf

100% this.

In March we didn't know, so it was wise to over isolate over prepare etc. But now we do know, and it's not a big deal at all for kids. Stop crippling our kids so 87 year old grandma can live 2 more years. If she would rather isolate she can, if she says, "I've lived long enough, if I get it I get it"...like my dad...then that's their choice. But not allowing second graders back to school in September is just soy boy mentality.

Lol imagine being over 21 and saying this

Low T is a problem plaguing this generation of men. It causes them to be weak, scared, and frantic. (Basically causes them to think emotionally instead of logically)

21-55 year old men that are scared of corona in September probably have a really high chance of being low T. (Now if they interact with a high risk individual I get it, but if you’re a 35 year old healthy male and afraid, you’re just a pussy at this stage).

This is some 4chan ****, I have never in my life heard a successful/well adjusted guy blame his or the world's problems on lack of testosterone

What ****ing nonsense.

Meat heads itt.

I always get irked by people speaking in absolutes but I will try to put that aside.


But lets first simply address that first point.

I understand how the exponential will close the distance, GIVEN ENOUGH TIME, but you are putting in some massively flawed assumptions.

First off you assume these countries would see the exponential explosion happening in real time and do nothing to counter it.

Second you assume the US will not see directional changes and will continue to fall.

The US, due to very poor management is still, in most regions dealing with its first wave. We have seen almost everywhere, that when you beat that first wave down and seem to have it under control, it comes back and R starts to rise as things re-open more and more.

So Georgia, Florida, Texas, etc can still look forward to the types of resurgences Europe is seeing and this time in the Fall/Winter months.

What I am saying is that you are making almost every 'good outcome' assumption based on the US and almost every 'bad outcome' assumption based on Europe in an attempt to frame it as "US doing great, everyone else is doing badly' and that is nonsense.

None of those countries would want to change spots with the US heading into the Fall/Winter and have this mass of ALREADY infected populace walking around and all the NEW DAILY CASES being added as opposed to a massively lower baseline that when the R again starts to rise they have so few cases that they have time to check it again.


You need only look at Canada as an example. They squashed the virus before the reopening. Things really started to rise in each province with R spiking but with so few cases they have been able to gradually (without reclosing) been able to bend those curves back down.

It is the LOW BASELINE that allowed that time and made it such that they did not have to resort to extreme measures again.


The US with its exceptionally high baseline has almost no room for error. You see an uptick or change in R at those already sky high levels, and it could instantly put the healthcare system at risk of tipping over.

So your conclusions seem far more 'optimistic' in all assumptions re the USA and assuming worst case in all other, in an attempt to frame the US as handling this great and others not. I will leave it to others to figure out the 'why'.