Follow the science:
Results : The most important predictor of when states adopted social distancing policies is political: All else equal, states led by Republican governors were slower to implement such policies during a critical window of early COVID-19 response.
Conclusions : Continuing actions driven by partisanship, rather than public health expertise and scientific recommendations, may exact greater tolls on health and broader society.
Is Economics a science? Are Psychology and Sociology sciences? If so, what do those sciences have to say about the effects of lockdowns, social isolation, kids stuck at home, etc. on human health and best interests of society?
That makes for a great political bumper sticker! Maybe with a pic of Bill Nye saying it, with his finger wagging at everyone for good measure.
They say, well, it’s better for them to not lock down, but considering the death of their relatives, spending time at home is better than mourning.
This gives me a great idea for a bumper sticker:
Better dead than socially isolated!
I’ll print 'em up in white text on red background with a little American flag in the corner.
For a buck more you get the
“Better dead from measles than on the spectrum!”
companion sticker.
All the social media posts like this irritate a number of people. It suggests purely binary thinking, that either you don’t get it, and live, or you get it and don’t live. And many of them seem to be quite serious/literal about it.
It is much like when people who have quit jobs and never leave the house choose to be irate and hateful at anyone who chooses to live with any level of calculated risk exposure.
I don’t pretend to know all the answers, but I know it is more complicated then your statement indicates. Depression has skyrocketed. Self-medication/drug&alcohol abuse/overdoses have skyrocketed. Calls to suicide hotlines and actual suicides have skyrocketed. Domestic/child abuse calls have skyrocketed. Social unrest has skyrocketed. Small business collapse and financial ruin (leading to more of all of the preceding) has and will continue to skyrocket. For some kids, they only get real adult attention/role models and nutrition at school…what are the longer-term societal consequence of this, and all of the above? As I said…it’s too complicated for me to understand, but I bet the full adverse nature of consequences of not very well understood polices will have impacts for a long time.
Not fair!! You know I’ll buy them all!! :–)
You think all of those things combined will kill 3% of the population?
I’m not saying we ignore the problems created by lockdowns, I say we fix those too. We start with the highest death rates and work our way down.
Hunhhh…?
Fauci and other public health experts have since put the COVID-19 death rate at about 0.6% – six times that of a typical flu season – which is the latest CDC projection.
OK, I’ve been given the opportunity to learn from new data. As a good scientist, I will take it and amend my statement:
You think all of those things combined will kill 3% (now known to be as low as 0.6%) of the population (now known to not be the population, but only the people who catch it which would be up to 70% of the population)?
“If you are sick, stay home”
This is exactly what the CDC has recommended from day 1.
They also said, “Call your Doctor”, while the recommendation to your Doctor was not to authorize any test unless at least 102’F fever, dry cough, sore throat, runny nose. Granted, many of the bevy of Covid-19 symptoms were not made public for months (diarrhea, loss of taste smell, etc…). The requirement of those 4 symptoms to authorize a test tells me that CDC was manipulating the public from day one with questionable information (remember “masks don’t work”?)
In the guidelines they posted to the public for the first 4 months, “Seek emergency medical care if you are short of breath, have blue lips, or are extremely dizzy”. A person with these symptoms is in a lot of trouble.
CDC has done a substandard job with this epidemic. Seeing Dr. Redfield sporting a substandard surgical mask, and touting it as more effective than vaccines, only reinforces their visible incompetence. You mean, all we ever had to do was wear masks?
I note that there have been 200,000 deaths out of 7,000,000 cases or 2.9%.
If one notes that only about 4,000,000 cases have been resolved. it comes out to 5%.
If one speculates that the death toll will be .6% of 331,000,000 the final US tally will be 2,000,000
In theory he’s right. The particular mask may not be good, but the math is sound. Let’s say the vaccine is only about 80-85% effective. And let’s believe the docs who say if we all were to wear masks, we could cut transmission by 90-95%. The math says keep wearing masks. And that’s not even factoring in the fact that the first vaccine probably won’t be approved for children, who are quite efficient at asymptomatic spread.
But who are we kidding? Many of the rabid anti-maskers are rabid anti-vaxxers, too. COVID will be with us for quite some time after a vaccine becomes available, because for some reason we here in the US have a soft spot for idiots and morons.
Seemingly so. We also have an enormous percentage of the population who would be well served if they put this on their bathroom mirror and read it aloud every single day:
Quote from Artemus Ward, late 1800’s: “It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble. It’s the things we know that just ain’t so.”
We call it Florida.
Dr. Redfield’s assertion in favor of masks, is scientifically sound, but the devil is in the details.
Your assumption that masks outperform a vaccine may be unsupported by the evidence. (See data below from coronamap . org) At the onset, the USA was in lockdown. After re-opening we peaked around 80,000 new cases per day, then came the mask ordinances, and we see the new case load averaging 50% lower, about 40,000 per day. So, the maskers and anti-maskers together are about 50% effective. Fatalities have dropped more (for several reasons) from 2,500 to 1,000 per day. This is all good news, but the epidemic continues to burn at a stabilized lower rate of infection, and the Fall Flu season is coming soon.
Current estimates for the BionTech/Pfizer vaccine indicate about a 70% efficacy. SARS-CoV2 (r0 ~ 2.5) will burn out at a Herd Immunity of 60-62%, using the SIR modelling numbers. Hopefully release under FDA Emergency Use Authorization is late October.
I may be overconfident, but with luck we will end this nightmare this year. With better masking, and a vaccine available, we will starve Covid-19 of viable vectors.
I have no confidence that anyone who refuses to wear a mask right now will change their mind on that. I also believe there will be a big anti-vax push from many of the same people when the vaccine is available.
I hope you’re right.
I’m also glad my employer has extended WFH through the end of the year and that my favorite grocery store has curbside pickup.
The Pfizer testing group, Ventavia Research, called and pushed my appointment forward to today. I go to get the 2nd dose of the BNT162R2 vaccine at 2pm.
Also, Ventavia has expanded the testing population from 30,000 to 44,000 subjects. This is by far the largest clinical trial in history.
Just like Customs…I do not trust any of those researchers.
Or WalMart…