Coronavirus pandemic

[Max Rockatansky]

Something that I've had some wondering about since this current outbreak got big was what will the ramifications be on things like mass transit plans and things like the New Urbanism movement?  It seems that media sources in California are starting to raise that question:

https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/03/27/california-saw-dense-housing-near-transit-as-its-future-what-now-1269263

[webny99]

Still nowhere near the estimated 24,000 to 62,000 deaths so far this season due to influenza.  Nor do I anticipate the death toll of the coronavirus will come anywhere near approaching those numbers.

IMHO, the number of indirect deaths might be as much if not more than COVID-19 deaths. Two weeks from now, we'll have a better idea on how this will play out.

So if the COVID-19 death totals come out to less than the current flu will it be declared a "Social success"  or "overreaction?"   I'm sure there would be plenty of spin both ways.

I mean, we've basically shuttered the economy already, doesn't that speak to the fact that it's too dangerous to find out what would happen if we let it spread unhindered (like we do the flu)?
I sure hope no one is doubting that coronavirus death toll could easily surpass the flu if we didn't take all the measures we've been taking. Whether the exact count ends up higher or lower seems irrelevant in the big picture, and doesn't change the fact that we've stumbled into a major 2-in-1 health and economic crisis that it's simply too late to turn back from. The effect this has had is simply not comparable to the flu on any level.

[Max Rockatansky]

Still nowhere near the estimated 24,000 to 62,000 deaths so far this season due to influenza.  Nor do I anticipate the death toll of the coronavirus will come anywhere near approaching those numbers.

IMHO, the number of indirect deaths might be as much if not more than COVID-19 deaths. Two weeks from now, we'll have a better idea on how this will play out.

So if the COVID-19 death totals come out to less than the current flu will it be declared a "Social success"  or "overreaction?"   I'm sure there would be plenty of spin both ways.

I mean, we've basically shuttered the economy already, doesn't that speak to the fact that it's too dangerous to find out what would happen if we let it spread unhindered (like we do the flu)?
I sure hope no one is doubting that coronavirus death toll could easily surpass the flu if we didn't take all the measures we've been taking. Whether the exact count ends up higher or lower seems irrelevant in the big picture, and doesn't change the fact that we've stumbled into a major 2-in-1 health and economic crisis that it's simply too late to turn back from. The effect this has had is simply not comparable to the flu on any level.

Granted the present situation isn't over but it is a question if the present Coronavirus will even surpass the Swine Flue mortality rates of 2009.  That's what I was getting upthread with the approach to that pandemic almost being the total opposite of what is going on now.  What is really unnerving is that the estimates generally range for a total fatalities for H1N1 coming out between 150,000 to 575,000 world wide.

So in that sense, why the reaction now to this virus but not back then?  It really is an intriguing question as to what changed that shifted public opinion and governmental action towards trying to curve the rate of infection on this level?   

[Max Rockatansky]

The weekly CDC surveillance for anyone is interested:

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm

[Duke87]

Granted the present situation isn't over but it is a question if the present Coronavirus will even surpass the Swine Flue mortality rates of 2009.  That's what I was getting upthread with the approach to that pandemic almost being the total opposite of what is going on now.  What is really unnerving is that the estimates generally range for a total fatalities for H1N1 coming out between 150,000 to 575,000 world wide.

So in that sense, why the reaction now to this virus but not back then?

Because you're looking at the wrong metric. The reaction to shut everything down and tell everyone they need to stay home in response to Covid isn't because of how deadly it is - it's because of how quickly, easily, and stealthily it spreads.

H1N1 may have killed a whole bunch of people (just as all flu strains do), but its natural spread through the population was much slower, and it was a problem that remained at a manageable level with everyone mostly continuing to go about their lives as normal. Covid, on the other hand, we know empirically can overwhelm hospitals very quickly if left unchecked, so it is necessary to take more aggressive measures to get it and keep it in check.

Also, if Covid were like most other viruses, aggressive measures to keep it in check would only really need to entail quarantining the sick - everyone else would be able to continue going about their lives mostly as normal. But because of Covid's propensity to spread asymptomatically, we're unable to tell with nearly sufficient reliability who is sick and who isn't - thus, we're reduced to the extremely blunt measure of quarantining everyone as much as is feasible.

[wxfree]

It appears that lottery ticket sales are down.  The minimum jackpot increase for Powerball is $10,000,000.  It's been increasing that much. Sometimes that happens, but most of the time it goes up faster.  Because of the high minimum, there's less variability.  The Mega Millions minimum increase is $5,000,000, and it's been increasing at or barely above that rate, which is substantially less than normal.  After 12 jackpot rolls, it's now at $113,000,000.  Looking at last year, after 12 rolls it would be in at least the 150s, and twice it was over 200.

[404inthe404]

News outlets are reporting that somewhere around 10% of coronavirus patients in China who were given the all-clear based on a negative test result are now testing positive again.

I am in Australia and everyone is very alarmed. Victoria, where I am, is going to go into full lockdown at any moment.

I was watching the ABC, which is Australia's PBS, and they were interviewing a doctor and they asked her about that 10% re-infection. What was notable was a complete lack of concern on her end - she said that these are people that still have the virus but what's notable is they are asymptomatic and they are not infecting their immediate family or anyone else in close quarters. So it seems like that's a bit of sensationalism that generates some click revenue and not really something to be worried about.

The other one I saw was that your lungs are permanently damaged after recovering from CV. I saw this a lot about a week or two ago, I don't know if this is still making the rounds. Well, I personally tracked this one down myself. It came from a study of 12 recovered patients in Hong Kong, where 3 of them didn't have full lung usage after 30 days. A far, far cry from most people's lungs were permanently damaged. I believe there are many illnesses that leave the lungs weak after recovery for some time, bronchitis being one of them.

[404inthe404]

Still nowhere near the estimated 24,000 to 62,000 deaths so far this season due to influenza.  Nor do I anticipate the death toll of the coronavirus will come anywhere near approaching those numbers.

IMHO, the number of indirect deaths might be as much if not more than COVID-19 deaths. Two weeks from now, we'll have a better idea on how this will play out.

So if the COVID-19 death totals come out to less than the current flu will it be declared a "Social success"  or "overreaction?"   I'm sure there would be plenty of spin both ways.

It's going to be an overreaction. As long as CV is only a few multiples of the regular flu, that number will be disregarded, and the absolutely insane predictions made by a lot of people including politicians are going to be scrutinized and a lot of people are going to lose credibility. There's so much nonsense that people are posting on Facebook - some guy is on my feed going around like a dozen times a day with predictions about how a million will die in the US by end of April if we don't go into total lockdown right now. These things aren't going to happen. In a few months time, the focus will be on the histrionics that many people were playing and how it wasn't worth shutting down the economy.

I hate to say it because I don't like him, didn't vote for him, and won't vote for him,  but I feel as though this cemented Trump's re-election. A *lot* of people on the left went so overboard with their predictions when there was really no reason to do so, that there is going to be a widespread credibility problem. If CV kills "only" 3x what the flu does, the sentiment of moderates and independents will turn against the politicians who are publicly stating Trump is mishandling this crisis.

[D-Dey65]

Something that I've had some wondering about since this current outbreak got big was what will the ramifications be on things like mass transit plans and things like the New Urbanism movement?  It seems that media sources in California are starting to raise that question:

https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/03/27/california-saw-dense-housing-near-transit-as-its-future-what-now-1269263

I'm hardly the biggest fan of new urbanism, but I really hope this doesn't screw up plans to extend the Second Avenue Subway. Or build any other proposed subway lines in NYC.

[jeffandnicole]

Sat outside by my firepit last night. We're about 1/4 - 1/2 mile from I-295. Sounded like a fair amount of traffic, and could easily hear the louder cars flying down the road.

We're also near PHL and without the leaves on the trees we can can see the flights as they are on their normal apporach to the airport (they fly near the Walt Whitman Bridge and the stadium complex). I think we took notice to 1 the entire time we were outside - over an hour. They normally land at a rate of roughly every 2 minutes.  Throughout the night sky,  air traffic was extremely sparse.

[AlexandriaVA]

I hear you on the airport thing - I live a few minutes from Washington National (DCA), and it's a quite similar dropoff in flight activity.

Ironically, it's no quieter because the real noise culprits, low-flying helicopters continue to fly over my neighborhood, which sits along I-395 (and is hence a designated transit corridor)

[kwellada]

Still nowhere near the estimated 24,000 to 62,000 deaths so far this season due to influenza.  Nor do I anticipate the death toll of the coronavirus will come anywhere near approaching those numbers.

That's partly because we're doing the right thing in shutting things down so the spread is contained and hospitals get overrun.  You don't let a virus that is more contagious than the flu with a higher general death rate AND no vaccine/treatment run wild. 

People are trying to downplay the deaths, but remember this: only 3000 people died on 9/11 and everything changed.  It may be a strange comparison, but coronavirus IS NOT the usual flu, nor should people conflate the two. 

[Max Rockatansky]

Still nowhere near the estimated 24,000 to 62,000 deaths so far this season due to influenza.  Nor do I anticipate the death toll of the coronavirus will come anywhere near approaching those numbers.

That's partly because we're doing the right thing in shutting things down so the spread is contained and hospitals get overrun.  You don't let a virus that is more contagious than the flu with a higher general death rate AND no vaccine/treatment run wild. 

People are trying to downplay the deaths, but remember this: only 3000 people died on 9/11 and everything changed.  It may be a strange comparison, but coronavirus IS NOT the usual flu, nor should people conflate the two.

I could be wrong but I believe he was referring the U.S. death total during this flu season which was somewhere north of 23,000 on the CDC website.  Compared to the flu the one thing that seems to be certain is that COVID-19 potentially spreads faster (fat faster) and the range of symptoms seems to be far more diverse (from nothing upward).  How deadly the COVID-19 is probably isn't the main issue that concerns health officials, it seems to be the chances it could put a lot of people rapidly in need of medical care.  To that end, the state goal of most of public officials hasn't been to "stop"  the viral spread but rather slow it down.  True prevention measures would have to be far more drastic than what you see right now to stop a viral spread State Side, even then there is a likelihood it wouldn't amount to more than a slow down. 

Comparing this to 9/11 probably is a good analogy.  Yes, only around 3,000 people died in the immediate effects but the aftermath had far reaching consequences that still affect everyday life for a lot of people.  So what are the consequences going to be here?  Is this something that people are going to forget about in five years or will it go the other way? 

[Revive 755]

I think it may be optimistic, depending on how much the lockdowns "leak," but even so it forecasts a little over one month (April 2 to May 5) with more than 1000 US deaths per day.

I think the lockdowns will be leaking, if not openly defied the longer they go on.

[Max Rockatansky]

I ended up going to Home Depot and Vons this morning on an errand run.  Home Depot had a whole line set up to funnel people in 50 at a time, fortunately I was way below their limit.  Vons had only one entrance open and was trying to get people to use the unmanned registers.  Both stores had almost no crowds and a bunch of water on hand.  I saw a decent amount of paper products at Vons and even eggs. 

[webny99]

Sat outside by my firepit last night. We're about 1/4 - 1/2 mile from I-295. Sounded like a fair amount of traffic, and could easily hear the louder cars flying down the road.

It's quieter overall, though, so the noise is probably just a bit more noticeable.

Depending on the winds, I can often hear the traffic on NY-590 from outside my house, and that's more than 2 miles away. I used to notice it most in the early morning (pre-7AM), but in the past few weeks I've been noticing it in the afternoon as well. My thought is that the traffic on all the closer roads used to drown out 590 in the afternoon, and now they're so much quieter that they don't.

[route56]

Kansas still doesn't have a statewide lockdown, but my county (Sedgwick) has had one since midnight last night.  I went out to wash the cars--it was sunny and warm (almost 80° F), so it was time to get rid of the last bits of salt residue clinging to the underbodies.

UPDATE!: A state-wide stay-at-home order goes into effect for Kansas on Monday

My home county (Jefferson) went into 'lockdown' this morning [3/28/20], along with Osage County.

[webny99]

Is it... dare I say... an advantage to share a state with the Big Apple at a time of crisis like this?
The more I hear reports trickling in of other states going into lockdown, the more I realize that our situation in Upstate NY just might be a blessing in disguise: the rest of the state rolls with what NYC does, of course, so we get the advantage of the spread being curtailed very early relative to how much the virus had spread, while still being hundreds of miles removed from the physical epicenter of the outbreak.

So I guess we're indebted to NYC for forcing the rest of the state to shut down when it did. There's no telling when a theoretical separate state containing the non-NYC areas of NY would have shut down, but I guarantee it would have been a week or so later, at minimum.

[Bruce]

Oregon will allow self-service gas pumping statewide in order to avoid person-to-person contact (but the virus can spread on pumps and buttons)

https://twitter.com/ByMikeBaker/status/1243994797976588289

[Scott5114]

Where's those screenshots of Oregonians posting to social media that the world is going to end if they have to pump their own gas?

[route56]

Oregon will allow self-service gas pumping statewide in order to avoid person-to-person contact (but the virus can spread on pumps and buttons)

OTOH, the one local station that still offers full service is encouraging their customers to stay in their car by offering the full service at self-service prices.

[jeffandnicole]

Self serve gas was never brought up in NJ, and really does seem counterintuitive.  Currently the only thing that's touched where transmission could occur is the credit card or cash. Self service, people are touching much more, as mentioned above. Not to mention being within 6 feet of others if others are nearby.

[Max Rockatansky]

So basically it's a good time to visit Oregon and not get annoyed by having to interact with a gas station attendant.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Fortunately for the state government, the first day of stay at home in Minnesota coincided with miserable weather statewide.

[vdeane]

Is it... dare I say... an advantage to share a state with the Big Apple at a time of crisis like this?
The more I hear reports trickling in of other states going into lockdown, the more I realize that our situation in Upstate NY just might be a blessing in disguise: the rest of the state rolls with what NYC does, of course, so we get the advantage of the spread being curtailed very early relative to how much the virus had spread, while still being hundreds of miles removed from the physical epicenter of the outbreak.

So I guess we're indebted to NYC for forcing the rest of the state to shut down when it did. There's no telling when a theoretical separate state containing the non-NYC areas of NY would have shut down, but I guarantee it would have been a week or so later, at minimum.

On the other hand, an upstate that was a separate state would not be subject to the whims to states that don't want anything to do with people from NYC right now.  Rhode Island in particular has gotten draconian with respect to people from NY.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/490019-cuomo-threatens-to-sue-ri-over-new-coronavirus-policy-targeting-ny
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-27/rhode-island-police-to-hunt-down-new-yorkers-seeking-refuge