OT: Evolving Ideas on COVID management
The longer this goes on the on the more it seems we have never had a good handle on it or the collateral consequences. Now this:
Organized by Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, and Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya, the Great Barrington Declaration recommends that people be allowed to live normally while protecting the vulnerable. The authors are infectious-disease experts, and the statement by our deadline had been signed by more than 2,300 medical and health scientists and 2,500 practitioners, and counting.
They describe their approach as “Focused Protection,” but it’s essentially what Sweden has done and even the World Health Organization is now recommending. Many European leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron are also slowly embracing it.
The collateral damage from government lockdowns “include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings, and deteriorating mental health—leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice,” the declaration says. “Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.”
And so it goes on. And the 99% of us who have no qualifications to weigh in on the science are stuck trying to fathom public policy that is perpetually going in contradictory directions.
October 9th, 2020 at 12:29 PM ^
Because one isn't a virologist doesn't preclude a logical understanding of a pandemic which is a mathematical model with societal behavior aspects that are considered along with a host of other variables, but it is math.
Different countries have different risk factors. With the obesity issue in the US and its impact on severity of Covid, what might work well in Norway might not do as well in an area with widespread obesity.
October 9th, 2020 at 12:33 PM ^
...and diabetes.
Good points
October 9th, 2020 at 12:56 PM ^
And hypertension
October 9th, 2020 at 3:07 PM ^
And stupidity.
October 9th, 2020 at 3:48 PM ^
And being inconsiderate of those around us
October 9th, 2020 at 10:43 PM ^
and trump
October 9th, 2020 at 12:58 PM ^
I was told it was all a thyroid problem...
October 9th, 2020 at 1:02 PM ^
I believe the term you're looking for is big boned.
October 9th, 2020 at 1:06 PM ^
I believe you are in the wrong thread. That comment would seem to belong in the Nick Foles (based on his nickname) thread below.
October 9th, 2020 at 2:15 PM ^
"husky"
October 9th, 2020 at 10:44 PM ^
Big boned? I dont ever recall seeing a fat skeleton
October 9th, 2020 at 1:23 PM ^
And good luck trying to get a non-mask wearer to admit that they're part of a vulnerable group.
October 9th, 2020 at 2:11 PM ^
If they get it and die, problem solved.
October 9th, 2020 at 2:22 PM ^
But Math is racist.
October 9th, 2020 at 2:27 PM ^
I believe the phrase your looking for is Everything is racist.
October 9th, 2020 at 12:31 PM ^
And so it goes on. And the 99% of us who have no qualifications to weigh in on the science are stuck trying to fathom public policy that is perpetually going in contradictory directions.
Unfortunately roughly half the US population is overweight and/or obese so the numbers are a little off from what you're suggesting.
October 9th, 2020 at 12:36 PM ^
and most of us dont get to take private helicopter rides to a hospital where we get an entire team of doctors to work on us, and early access to experimental treatments that aren't yet available for eveyone else.
This is bullshit propaganda, the opinion of 3 individuals. It is not the opinion of the vast majority of public health experts.
October 9th, 2020 at 12:40 PM ^
Many other medical and public health scientists and medical practitioners co-signed.
October 9th, 2020 at 12:50 PM ^
Let's see if I got this.......
Over thirty professionals from esteemed organizations around the world - immunologists, biostatisticians, epidemiologists, pediatricians, psychiatrists, mathematicians, microbiologists - have gone public with their best recommendation at this moment about how to handle this specific pandemic and YOU say it's "bullshit propaganda".
Right.
October 9th, 2020 at 9:45 PM ^
Its over 2,000
October 9th, 2020 at 12:52 PM ^
"This is bullshit propaganda, the opinion of 3 individuals. It is not the opinion of the vast majority of public health experts"
Conservatives on this blog love to find outlier studies that don't agree with the vast majority of public health experts and treat it as some ground breaking truth about the virus
October 9th, 2020 at 1:09 PM ^
At one point, the vast majority of medical professionals thought blood-letting with leaches was an effective way to treat disease. I think it's prudent to both listen to and evaluate new information while incorporating the credentials of those putting it forth. Oxford and Stanford researchers presumably aren't exactly slouches in their field.
October 9th, 2020 at 1:28 PM ^
Anthony Fauci talks about return to schools, for instance, and that there needs to be a balance between safety of the kids, teachers, and staff, versus the "negative downstream ripple effect" for kids who rely on the school system for supplemental nutrition, overburdened parents who can't juggle kids at home and work.
Numerous medical groups have also come out saying that there will be increased cardiovascular and cancer mortality due to delays in preventative screenings due to CoVid.
This is an incredibly nuanced issue; your "hur dur conservative retards" isn't helpful.
FWIW MPH and MD.
October 9th, 2020 at 2:12 PM ^
End thread
October 9th, 2020 at 3:06 PM ^
This is an incredibly nuanced issue is exactly the point.
Right now, Wisconsin hospitals are on the verge if being overwhelmed
“At 6:45 a.m. Tuesday, not a single bed was available throughout the ThedaCare system in the Fox Valley, President and CEO Dr. Imran Andrabi told reporters Wednesday.
Since then, a few beds have opened. But that could change by Wednesday evening, he said — and underscores that the health system is at a tipping point.
"If this is not a crisis, I don't know what a crisis looks like," Andrabi said.
Beds are filling and staff are out sick at hospitals across the state as COVID-19 hospitalizations continue to climb, from fewer than 300 patients a month ago to 873 on Wednesday. Gov. Tony Evers announced Wednesday that a 530-bed field hospital, built earlier this year at State Fair Park in Milwaukee, would open Oct. 14 to relieve some pressure. ‘
It would probably not be the best idea to further exacerbate spread there in the quest for herd immunity.
Maine on the other hand is seeing 2.2 cases per 100,000 and has a test positivity of 0.5%. Probably a much better place for policies like this.
October 10th, 2020 at 9:25 AM ^
So, what works in one state doesn't work in another. Which is exactly why Trump didn't have a national response. In fact, he said almost exactly that in March. But of course the media vilified him for being so stupid and racist to think that Maine and California aren't the exact same state!
This new breed of marxist is insufferable. At least Lenin was honest.
October 9th, 2020 at 2:16 PM ^
That's a hot take and bold, to boot. I'm not sure what exactly your point is, but if you're poking at the OP, there's an entire country using this method and it's working for the entire country. So?
Are you poking at the initiator of this particular thread under this post? Because I would say he's not a fan of Trump.
Or is there just a need to make this completely political and make it a shitshow like everything else around here?
Maybe you can just debate the idea on its merits rather than making everything as confrontational as possible
October 9th, 2020 at 10:44 PM ^
If you had read the post you'd have noticed that the recommendation is backed by over 2300 physicians and scientists. This virus is still not well understood and we have a lot more to learn about it. Because of the unknowns involved, there can be legitimate differences of opinion among honest, competent physicians and scientists. Just because you don't them with your opinion does not mean their opinions are "bull shit propaganda". The reason science is effective is that differences of opinion are allowed and the differences are discussed.
October 9th, 2020 at 12:54 PM ^
That gets at one clear issue in the OP:
"... while protecting the vulnerable ..."
I've complained about this many times. You can't do a binary sort on the population for this issue. There are at least three dimensions of risk (age, virus dose / hit, and underlying conditions) and they're all roughly continuous. In the third one (underlying conditions) you have multiple sub-dimensions (I guess) of risk.
Aside but related: When this is all over we're probably going to learn that a small number of people were ever at risk for nasty courses. That's still speculative. But, it hasn't stopped the COVID-19 weasels from making confident declarations.
October 9th, 2020 at 1:57 PM ^
don't trust the heron. he'll lull you and distract you with some covid commentary and suddenly, boom! you're heading down the gullet
October 9th, 2020 at 4:49 PM ^
Good advice.
Somewhat related, a friend of mine in the north Chicago 'burbs just lost 75% of his koi pond (six of eight fish) to a blue heron over a few days. He saw the third/fourth one go but missed the other thefts.
How did two survive? One was huge and one was small enough to hide under some rocks.
October 9th, 2020 at 8:28 PM ^
Fuck I love disruptive selection.
October 10th, 2020 at 1:26 AM ^
I think you might have mistaken a pink heron for blueheron, XM, and I know my missing sunglasses were not rose-colored.
October 9th, 2020 at 3:38 PM ^
Age is by far the most important factor in severity or fatality.
October 9th, 2020 at 9:04 PM ^
I would disagree with this. Just my observation, but many people in their 70s, 80s and beyond have recovered, because they were in good health. The statistics make it look like age is the key because so many old people have died, but many old people have underlying conditions.
October 9th, 2020 at 12:33 PM ^
Oh boy here we go- me myself and Irene dot gif
October 9th, 2020 at 12:34 PM ^
Contrary to mgoblog projections, Sweden’s GDP ended up outperforming most of the world (including all of their Scandinavian neighbors)
yes, many more in sweden died, but they have other policies (particularly regarding anti-mask policies) that are more dangerous than their general approach to Covid
the level of global lockdowns we saw in March will never happen again. Nobody can afford that hit again. When wave 2 comes (and it’s starting now), most of the world will adopt some version of what sweden has done
October 9th, 2020 at 1:11 PM ^
Did you read the article you cited because it isn't really praising the Swedes.
“There’s been a lot of talk about Sweden having a milder lockdown than the other Nordic countries” during the coronavirus pandemic, Olsen said in an interview in Copenhagen. “You’d expect Sweden’s economic performance to be way better, but in reality what we see is that the Swedish performance is very close to what we see in the other Nordic countries.”
And so for relatively little economic benefit Sweden saw at least 5800 people die out of a population of 10M; Finland, Norway, and Denmark combined had about 1300 deaths out of a population of 16M. And there's no reason to believe Sweden will be any more or less "saved" from a second wave of infections.
Again, if your whole goal is to keep the economy going with minimal disruption to your life, go with the Swedish model. But also accept that you're going to see a whole lot of people die in the process.
October 9th, 2020 at 1:39 PM ^
It's almost as if...economies are global or something. I don't know why in a global economy anyone would expect Sweden to have done a lot better than everyone else. If the world changes consumption patterns writ large, Sweden's 10mil people aren't going to be able to make up for the lost demand. Having some restaurants remain open doesn't move the needle much for the economy.
When China opened back up and factories came back on line in like May, they had nothing to produce because the rest of the world wasn't ordering what they were making.
Also, this doesn't take into account deficit spending. If other countries had to increase national debts to support higher govt spending and transfer payments while keeping people from working, they can prop up GDP but at cost (in debt).
What staying open for Sweden might have done is 1) keep kids in school and developing normally 2) keep people social and mildly more sane 3) make people more comfortable getting health screens for other ailments, etc. It's harder to measure whether they were able to do better on those measures than other countries but the economy wasn't something they were reasonably going to be able to salvage when global demand for just about everything plummeted.
October 9th, 2020 at 2:00 PM ^
The economic arguments always struck me as weird anyway because, as you noted, global economies are reliant on some many factors outside of a single country's borders.
I do think keeping the schools open was the biggest gain for Sweden, though they had issues with some kids, teachers, etc. getting infected and not all parents wanting to send their kids (I believe Sweden actually threatened parents who didn't want to send their kids). And other countries have been able to reopen with similar results and with far fewer deaths, so it wasn't perfect.
I think Sweden's model would have worked in the US if people took mask wearing and social distancing seriously and didn't let it become politicized. Once that happened, though, there was no way back to a more muted option with respect to this disease.
October 9th, 2020 at 4:44 PM ^
I think we have enough evidence to know that Sweden’s model would not have worked everywhere, all the time in the US. At various points, multiple states have had overwhelmed hospitals. I think you need at least a four point plan.
1. Sufficient testing to know if you have a local problem
2. Protocols in place when you are not in a more severe lockdown type mode. These would include public mask wearing, isolating the most vulnerable (but understanding this can only be done so well). Ideally encouraging additional other measures like work from home for those able.
3. criteria and protocols for increased measures as the health system starts to get overwhelmed.
4. Funding to carry out the strategy.
October 9th, 2020 at 9:13 PM ^
"if your whole goal is to keep the economy going with minimal disruption to your life, go with the Swedish model."
Wrong. Taiwan, Korea, NZ, Australia all doing better economically with far far fewer deaths than Sweden. It's really amazing how few Americans comprehend there's a world outside of North America and Europe.
October 9th, 2020 at 2:44 PM ^
I'd be happy to take the Swedish model Covid management if their cradle-to-grave guaranteed healthcare comes with.
October 9th, 2020 at 6:49 PM ^
Eh, Sweden's deaths per million were solidly in the middle of the pack for Europe and better than ours.
1 out of 5 small businesses in the USA have failed since the pandemic (according to a payment processing company that uses payment activity to check viability). That's the group that really got hammered. Big businesses did OK and will come back fast.
October 9th, 2020 at 12:34 PM ^
I signed the declaration.
October 9th, 2020 at 12:37 PM ^
If we just did what we had to do we would be getting back to normal by now.
October 9th, 2020 at 12:42 PM ^
Yes, platitudes have been very effective at controlling this virus.
October 9th, 2020 at 1:13 PM ^
Not platitudes.
Literally, it's 2020, we're advanced as all hell technologically, yet we behaved as we did and here we are. We've shown that if and when something even deadlier and to a larger population percentage occurs, we don't have the maturity as a society to handle for shit. The division amongst people these days only makes it worse. I've lost so much faith in my fellow humans and the societal structure this country uses as legs. It's crumbling and seemingly fast.
October 9th, 2020 at 1:31 PM ^
Not platitude requires a plan. Stay at home indefinitely is not a plan.
October 9th, 2020 at 2:09 PM ^
That was never the plan. Stay-at-home orders/lockdowns don't have to last indefinitely - just long enough to get the virus under control in certain areas. And that ultimately saves money and avoids sustained economic damage in the long run. The NYC area is the prime example of this: they had the worst outbreak, responded properly and the case numbers went way down. The virus is not totally gone but it's low enough for people to get somewhat back to normal.
Only a few states followed this pattern. And the states with bad outbreaks (my state is one of the worst right now) did not do this to the same degree that NY, NJ, MI and others did.