The Corona Virus

[Kaptin Keen]

The staff of an retirement home where a lot of old people died were positive, so the guy bringing me groceries must be positive too? What?

Despite best efforts, in a retirement home of all places, the virus still got in, because in a significant number of cases ... there are no symptoms.

So for every single link in the chain that makes sure you still get food and toilet paper while in quarentine, there is the risk of an undiscovered case.

And I'm not saying you get sick.

My post specifically states 'pockets of infection'. As long as there are pockets of infection, the disease is not eradicated.

Oh and ......... then there's the entire rest of the world.

[Bavarian itP]

And I'm not saying you get sick.

Yes you did.

we will all get it

[Liquor Box]

Yes you did.

Someone linked a few weeks back to a study suggesting that circa 40% of the world population would get it at some stage if nothing more than light touch preventative measures are taken (isolating those showing symptoms and the elderly I think).

[NichG]

I agree with most of that.

My only real disagreement is that I don't think it's clear that the strategy you outline is a good co-operation strategy, because taking that course destroys the economy (much moreso than taking a lighter touch I think). Eradication of the virus is not the only metric worth considering.

It's actually a less severe lockdown in terms of total effect than many which have been on-going. It only requires 4 weeks of cessation of non-essential activities, plus 2 weeks of reduction of essential activities. So on a yearly basis, it's a 10% reduction in overall activity. Whereas we're going into 2 or 3 months of reduced activity right now, and will likely continue to have reduced activity either at a constant level or in bursts for the next 16 months (if a vaccine works) or in some form basically forever if it doesn't. We've already exceeded that 10% number.

A 10% reduction isn't 'destroying the economy' or if it is, then we have already done so and the economy is already dead.

That 10% reduction may destroy specific businesses, or certain existing logistical relationships which run at just-in-time levels of operation, but as long as there are people who have needs there's going to be an economy. Regardless of whatever we do, it's likely that a large fraction of individually-owned restaurants will shut down and their owners will have to find different lines of work, because many of those businesses have razor thin margins or are even run at a loss with the hope of building a clientele of regulars. But that's going to happen even if we didn't have a lockdown, since even without any sort of explicitly imposed restrictions there was something like a 20-30% reduction in that sort of activity here in Japan even back in March.

I'm not saying that this level of coordination is achievable by humanity, or that we'd want to live in the kind of world that would be necessary for it to be possible. But if we're being honest about the costs of things so that we can make measured decisions, it's important to account for the costs of varying levels of coordination and use that in our evaluation of the world's response to the pandemic.

For instance, if you had one state with a ton of inter-state commerce declare a lock-down early, while all the states around them declare a lock-down late, then that's going to create a worse outcome for everyone than if you had lock-downs of exactly the same length, but all at exactly the same times as well. Here it's not a contrast between 'lockdown or not', it's only about relative timing.

That would never work.

Let me give you an example. There is a retirement home here in Copenhagen which had a tragic spree of Covid-19 deaths. 16 people died.

When all staff was tested, 15 were positive - none had any symptoms. Like, zero out of fifteen showed any signs of being infected.

That guy who's bringing you the groceries you bought online? The clerk at the pharmacy? People working in transportation, packing, warehousing, agriculture - all those essential workers - they'll have it, some of them, and they'll be enough of a pocket for the virus to exist in.

No - we will all get it, eventually. It's a question of when, not if.

That's why in what I proposed, I kept a reserve of 1/2 of essential workers who would also be in isolation. Then at the end of the first month, you do a full swap, with only previously-isolated essential workers doing those jobs, and the ones who were out in contact with each-other switching to isolation.

Edit: To get in front of the argument of 'they're essential, you can't reserve them without consequences', lets look at farming as an example case. There's about 590 million 'family' farms in the world, and with modern practices a family farm produces enough to feed 155 people, so we have about 10x as much farming capacity as needed to avoid starvation. If we take into account that perhaps that distribution is weighted towards farms that don't use fully modernized practices, farming methods from about 50 years ago could still produce food for 70 people from one farm of this size, which would still mean we're at 5x demand. There are other things that might be closer to a red-line for having something break, but we wouldn't starve. (I'm getting these numbers from https://recipes.howstuffworks.com/ho...armer-feed.htm)

I'm also talking about South Korea-style isolation, not 'go to the grocery store once every 3 days and go for a jog outside every day with social distancing' type isolation - basically, goods delivered via drop-off rather than face-to-face, decontamination of the packaging of the goods, etc. If you're in a situation where it requires staff to deal closely with a quarantined group, the staff would have to be live-in for the duration. Ideally, you'd basically take a month in advance to set this all up and equip people with 1 month of goods before-hand so they don't even need to receive things during the isolation period outside of emergencies.

I'm not saying people would enjoy this, or would be willing to comply with it. In fact, I do think non-compliance would probably be enough to keep the virus alive (though probably at a level where contact tracing stands a chance of wiping it out). But it's a reference point to measure where the inefficiencies of our responses are coming from.

[Liquor Box]

It's actually a less severe lockdown in terms of total effect than many which have been on-going. It only requires 4 weeks of cessation of non-essential activities, plus 2 weeks of reduction of essential activities. So on a yearly basis, it's a 10% reduction in overall activity. Whereas we're going into 2 or 3 months of reduced activity right now, and will likely continue to have reduced activity either at a constant level or in bursts for the next 16 months (if a vaccine works) or in some form basically forever if it doesn't. We've already exceeded that 10% number.

A 10% reduction isn't 'destroying the economy' or if it is, then we have already done so and the economy is already dead.

That 10% reduction may destroy specific businesses, or certain existing logistical relationships which run at just-in-time levels of operation, but as long as there are people who have needs there's going to be an economy. Regardless of whatever we do, it's likely that a large fraction of individually-owned restaurants will shut down and their owners will have to find different lines of work, because many of those businesses have razor thin margins or are even run at a loss with the hope of building a clientele of regulars. But that's going to happen even if we didn't have a lockdown, since even without any sort of explicitly imposed restrictions there was something like a 20-30% reduction in that sort of activity here in Japan even back in March.

I'm not saying that this level of coordination is achievable by humanity, or that we'd want to live in the kind of world that would be necessary for it to be possible. But if we're being honest about the costs of things so that we can make measured decisions, it's important to account for the costs of varying levels of coordination and use that in our evaluation of the world's response to the pandemic.

For instance, if you had one state with a ton of inter-state commerce declare a lock-down early, while all the states around them declare a lock-down late, then that's going to create a worse outcome for everyone than if you had lock-downs of exactly the same length, but all at exactly the same times as well. Here it's not a contrast between 'lockdown or not', it's only about relative timing.

We are agreed that coordination is preferable, with everyone doing the same thing. We are agreed that whatever process is decided on, it would be better overall if it was implemented by everyone at the same time. We are just not agreed on what the best approach is.

Saying that the lockdown will/has 'destroyed' the economy is hyperbole. Rather it will/has do a huge amount of harm to the economy. Significantly more harm than doing nothing except closing borders and isolating the sick and vulnerable would.

I have no idea what the two or three months of reduced activity you refer to is (is it what they are dong locally where you live?), but presumably it was the option taken to reduce the economic impact. So perhaps the decision makers disagree with your conclusions about which would have the worse impact?

It is not as simple as saying 10% of the year of inactivity means a 10% reduction. During that month people aren't receiving an income, therefore when they come out of lockdown, they have less money to spend. That means there is less economic activity in the month following lockdown, which means more people lose their jobs/more businesses close.Much like a small outbreak of covid can grow exponentially, and small contraction in the economic quickly spirals into something more.

[NichG]

We are agreed that coordination is preferable, with everyone doing the same thing. We are agreed that whatever process is decided on, it would be better overall if it was implemented by everyone at the same time. We are just not agreed on what the best approach is.

Saying that the lockdown will/has 'destroyed' the economy is hyperbole. Rather it will/has do a huge amount of harm to the economy. Significantly more harm than doing nothing except closing borders and isolating the sick and vulnerable would.

This is my point though. You were saying that a 4 week total isolation would potentially destroy the economy. I'm saying that there are places that have effectively already paid a higher economic price than that, and it hasn't destroyed their economies.

I have no idea what the two or three months of reduced activity you refer to is (is it what they are dong locally where you live?), but presumably it was the option taken to reduce the economic impact. So perhaps the decision makers disagree with your conclusions about which would have the worse impact?

In Japan (where I am), there hasn't been much in the way of official interventions (almost everything has been of an 'advisory' nature), but from March there was something like a 20-30% drop in public activity because of people deciding on their own, and many companies started to roll out work-from-home policies from around that time (mine has been on 'WFH if you can from March, WFH mandatory from April' for example). That 20-30% drop in public activity is now approaching a target drop of 80% (measured via public transport activity).

San Francisco also had stay-at-home orders starting from March, and South Korea, Hong Kong, etc have been implementing their own interventions from then or even earlier. The Italy lockdown was also at the start of March. So, worldwide there have been aggressive interventions roughly for the last 2 months.

I'm not in particular commenting on the choices made by local decision makers - that would get political and I don't want to go there. Also, the entire point of this line of argument is that local decisions don't matter so much as coordinated behavior - if some state governor or country leader made a good choice or a bad choice, at some point that's going to be outweighed by whether the collective choices of everyone manage to drive this coronavirus extinct, leave us with a new seasonal ailment, etc. That's not something that an individual decision maker's decision can actually control, so that's not actually the relevant level of organization for this line of discussion.

It is not as simple as saying 10% of the year of inactivity means a 10% reduction. During that month people aren't receiving an income, therefore when they come out of lockdown, they have less money to spend. That means there is less economic activity in the month following lockdown, which means more people lose their jobs/more businesses close.Much like a small outbreak of covid can grow exponentially, and small contraction in the economic quickly spirals into something more.

10% of GDP is less than the tax level in pretty much any country whose tax structure I'm familiar with, so this is a solvable problem via re-allocation of existing resources. It's not a matter of 'could it be done?', it's a matter of 'would we choose to do it?'. And actually, this is about the right order of magnitude for the stimulus package the US passed recently - that was $2T, which is about 10% of US GDP.

[Tyndmyr]

Sorry, didn't read for a while, had pages to catch up on, so this is kind of an omnibus response.

And equally damning, this fantasy that if we kept everything open "at least the economy wouldn't tank" is also ridiculous. Enough people would've started avoiding restaurants, cinemas, etc. that theirs collapse would've happened anyway, except on a backdrop of even more people dead. Businesses can be reopened or recovered. Loss of a significant portion of the population cannot.

Grey Wolf

That is the natural way it goes. Whatever is advocated goes by the wayside if enough people feel threatened. Enough people feeling extreme danger, they'll just not go do the dangerous thing. Obviously, this doesn't work for 100% of people, but it certainly is a common thing we see throughout history with plagues. Interestingly, we may be seeing the reverse of that now, with google's metrics showing generally increased traffic and activity. There may be a limit of how long this behavior lasts before people revert to the norm, regardless of what others tell them to do.

The carrier group itself is not the point. The point is that the United States Navy considers them very important, and there are very few things that would cause the Navy to take one out of action. The fact that coronavirus is one of those things is very telling about how serious the spread of this disease is. Armed forces are, quite reasonably, known for continuing to do their job in adverse or even dangerous conditions. If they start shutting down multi-billion dollar operations, it's for a very good reason.

Saying it doesn't matter because you don't care for carrier groups is ridiculous. That would be like a coal miner seeing a dead canary and staying in the mine because he doesn't like birds.

And if I can be an armchair general, this was almost certainly the correct call. Even in wartime, illness and disease usually account for a large proportion of casualties, often a majority. If you look at say, WW1, or the US civil war, disease looms pretty large over the whole thing. The military has a lot of problems dealing with disease, even among young, generally healthy folks, for a lot of reasons(one being, on a ship, people are cooped up in close proximity). As a result, taking outbreaks quite seriously is probably the smart play for them. History says it won't work out well for your military if you don't.

This may not translate into an exact model for societies ashore, though. Most cities are not very similar to an aircraft carrier.

This evidence points to one of two things: either the disease is really good at killing people, or the lock-downs didn't do anything. Without the proper scientific studies I doubt we will ever know which is the truth.

I have seen at least some scientific evidence that the lockdowns did nothing/so little it has no statistical impact.

It's kind of early to say for sure one way or another. We're still working with inherently limited data. The above *seems* odd. Intuitively, it seems as if all the various changes ought to do at least something. But looking at past pandemics, broad reactions have very often gotten it wrong. Black Death, folks didn't understand it was rats as the transmission vector, and did all sorts of silly things with very little effect. Colonial US, sick towns are regions were strictly quarantined. Nobody goes in, nobody comes out. Transmission vector was mosquitos, so this did absolutely nothing to stop disease. Spanish Flu, we tried fixing it with megadoses of asprin, and it turns out if you feed people 50 asprin at once, they bleed out and die.

So it's likely that at least some of the stuff we're doing is probably not very effective, and we likely don't yet know exactly what or why.

I'm gonna pause for a moment and say that, regardless of this, we *do* appear to be approaching a peak in the numbers. And even if you question the validity of measuring the infected, a similar pattern can be found among the deaths, which are fairly noticeable. So, this is likely to be true regardless of testing limitations, even though accuracy of infection counts does still matter quite a bit for predicting what'll happen overall. So, while the situation is still quite bad overall, it looks to be approaching a reversal point.

Do I plan to be among the first people heading outside, with a checklist of things to do to celebrate things being open again? No. I'd rather not be a beta tester, particularly in an area with fairly high infection counts. But I can see why people would feel that way. Particularly if they're in an area that didn't get hit as hard. Generally speaking, lockdowns have been more severe in areas that have suffered more from the disease, which makes sense. In areas with relatively low death rates, people are a bit more eager to get back to normal. It just isn't as severe for them. The point at which going back to normal makes sense will probably vary significantly by area.

Personally, I think the area that was most screwed up on was masks. I'm gonna take a detour to explain why. Goin' around social media, there are various memes making fun of North Korea, implying that their infection count varies repeatedly between 0 and 1, implying that they solved the infection by shooting the infected. This would, obviously, not work as policy. Setting aside questions of evilness, the disease has a long incubation period. If you shoot people after they show symptoms, the disease is still spreading, you just now have an (infected!) corpse to deal with and a disease. Not ideal.

The early guidance was that you should only wear a mask if you are sick. This runs into exactly the same problem as the above "solution". By the time you realize you're sick, it's a bit late. It seems we've come to a general understanding that the early advice on that subject was outright bad.

It also seems likely that at least some of the quarantining rules were poorly thought out. I'm not sure how military flyovers really fix anything, and folks were gathering to watch 'em, so...it seems counter-productive?

No offense but that is a silly take. We can see doubling speed in different regions and that it has slowed down with lock down (and some are long enough in lock down to have that happen with death counts which is more reliable) we can also see death per million in the hardest hit regions and notice from the vast difference to milder region that the milder region aren't slowing down because of the virus running out of uninfected host.

Take germany it stands at 77 death per million and there is a clear downward trend for both new detected infected and daily death and active cases have been dropping for a while now. Then we look at NYC a city with a population of 8.4 million which gives its count as 12k confirmed and 5k probable death and notice that even just with the confirmed count there is almost a factor of 20 between their death per million numbers so it is safe to say something slowed the spread that isn't saturation of the population. What do you suggest as explanation that doesn't involve the lock down in germany doing anything?

There is quite a lot of variation, and you're comparing only two data points, one of which is a city, and one of which is a country. The US, overall, is roughly middle of the pack of affected countries in terms of deaths/population, but NYC is by far its worst hot spot. However, NYC is more locked down than most, with seven states still not having a lockdown at all, yet being among the lowest for infection. Say, Oklahoma has done almost nothing, and has only about 230 dead. To at least some extent, lockdowns appear to be far more effect than cause.

It may be that the measures would help to some degree, but are simply happening too late, given the rate at which people are non-symptomatic and the length of time before they prevent symptoms when they do. It may also be that they are not doing all that much. The shape of the curve in say, Oklahoma, is most certainly not any more terrifying than in more restrictive states. Population density is most certainly a factor, but beyond that, we're dealing in very limited, incomplete, and conflicted data.

Germany has cities, many big cities. I don't think population density is a significant factor.

The population density of Germany as a whole is vastly lower than for NYC. Given that those are the two things you compared, it is almost certainly the largest factor for the differing results between them.

Some measures might be doing something, but whatever effect that is appears to be vastly smaller than population density.

And Athens is 20000 people per square km, and Paris 21k. There is no real correlation between density and how bad the infection is - France is mid-to-bad, Greece is doing amongst probably the best in EU, while England with it's "low" 4500 people/km2 London is atrocious.

A much better indicator? Tourist per year. Very touristy places, that gets lots of international travel, got infected earlier and where harder to track. Regardless of density. But even that is at best a rough estimate.

Grey Wolf

That makes a degree of sense. If you happened to have a bunch of infected people travel to your city, well, that doesn't help. Number of tourists would, at least, indicate your odds to be unlucky in that regard.

I also saw a speculative article noting that an unusually low number of smokers were reported as infected, both in the US and in France. This would seem to be the opposite of what would be expected for something that hits the lungs, but there may be some weird effect in play there. Conversely, obesity is almost certainly a risk factor worsening outcomes. So, being thin, young and smoking may be an odd ideal demographic.

But I wouldn't put too much weight in the above. They were one off studies, not soundly confirmed yet. More just interesting speculation. Certainly don't take up smoking just in case. But it's interesting to read all the oddball theories folks have come up with.

Regarding comparing the lethality of cv19 vs flu:
There are undoubtably people who have caught cv19 but had mild or no symptoms and so have not been counted in the official statistics, meaning the lethality is probably less than the statistics imply.

But is that not true for flu as well?

So saying "we can't know if this is really worse than the flu until we do mass bloodtests" isnt really meaningful if we don't also do as rigorous testing for flu.

The flu is fairly well known, so we can accurately estimate the ratio of asymptomatic carriers. Overall, it's 19.1%, with slightly different numbers for each strain. Coronavirus appears to be asymptomatic far more frequently, but we do not have anything like that precision. So, additional Coronavirus testing provides us with far more knowledge than additional flu testing would.

It seems quite probable that it's more dangerous than the flu, but how much more dangerous is still open.

Unfortunately the returns for a lot of responses to a pandemic are a lot higher for coherent responses than varied ones. Half the countries wiping out Covid while the other half do nothing is far less than half as useful as everyone wiping it out. Its a large scale game of prisoner's dilemma.

It is likely that we will have some difficulty wiping it out entirely. It's quite widespread, which makes the situation far more difficult. Additionally, some countries simply lack resources. While Africa was mostly late to get the disease, much of the continent is simply lacking in medical facilities and other infrastructure. It seems likely that they will have extreme difficulty coping in some regards. I get the hope that if everyone is entirely unified, we can flatten it all at once, but I'm not sure that's even possible, let alone likely.

What is "the economy"? Why is it good?

The economy is an abstract measurement of overall wealth. It is good, sort of, though it is sufficiently abstract as a measurement that this is only sort of a general guideline. Inflated housing prices would result in a higher assessment of the economy, but are probably not a good thing as per the housing crash.

But right now, there are a lot of folks that are out of work and not being paid. I've got a friend who runs a house-cleaning company, employs about a dozen people. Ran, I should say. He's already closed it down. Simply cannot operate. Right now, my area is experiencing shortages of meats in many grocery stores, with strict quotas in many places and/or lack of supply. Some processing plants are closed up because people got sick at them. I don't think all of these consequences are avoidable, as some would happen regardless, but they are generally awful, and figuring out how to reduce them is important. As previously covered, unemployment is associated with increased early mortality. We've never had unemployment at these rates before, so we don't really know how bad this could get, but it's pretty certain it will result in some amount of deaths.

There are also non-financial effects of lockdowns. It appears that spouse and child abuse is happening at unusual levels, because locking people in with their abusers is, well, not great. I don't think anyone particularly wants that, and most probably didn't consider it, but now that we know, we probably should factor that in.

Some elective medical care, if delayed, can negatively impact health. Preventative care early can significantly reduce problems down the road. Given that there has been mass cancellation of anything elective for some time in many areas, this is most certainly going to cause at least some deaths down the road.

It is possible that, already, the cost of the lockdown is higher than of the disease, but it's just too early to know for sure. Many effects take a long time to play out. Plus, not every area even has the same rules, or same risk from the disease. The cost/benefit analysis might be very different from one area to another. Everybody's making a best guess with woefully incomplete data, so, whatever your viewpoint, it's probably worth extending at least some benefit of the doubt to the other side.

[Kaptin Keen]

Yes you did.

Oh. Yes, but ...

Look, it's two different things I'm talking about. But I can see how that's not super clear.

Thing 1: We're not eradicating this disease. Bam the end. It's everywhere, we're not getting rid of it. But when I say there will be pockets for the virus to survive - that doesn't mean you personally are that pocket.

Thing 2: Since we're not getting rid of the disease - yes, eventually you will get it. This disease will become part of the eternal rotation of flu's we get. That, however, is 100% guesswork on my part. But my guess is that it's basically here to stay, it'll become far less relevant as our immune systems learn to fight it - and yes, you will get it, at some point.

So yes. Since you're included in the 'everyone' - I believe you will eventually get Covid-19. But in this argument, it's equivalent to saying you will catch a cold.

[NotASpiderSwarm]

In the context I am talking about it (assuming that your comment was aimed at my reference), the economy is the production, trade and consumption of goods and services (from food to luxuries to housing to entertainment to insurance). All these things have been reduced by Covid, and by lockdown responses in particular.

It's good because without it we don't have the things we desire or need.

Except that at least a significant chunk of the production of goods is still happening. Food is still being produced at similar numbers. Houses are still being built, and housing is available. The economy is why farmers are plowing under their fields or selling beef at a loss while grocery stores and food banks are empty. Why people are sleeping in parking lots in Vegas while every hotel is vacant. We have the things we desire or need because of people doing the work, not "the economy", and anything that prioritizes the economy over the people doing the work during this crisis is missing the forest for the trees.

[Tyndmyr]

Thing 2: Since we're not getting rid of the disease - yes, eventually you will get it. This disease will become part of the eternal rotation of flu's we get. That, however, is 100% guesswork on my part. But my guess is that it's basically here to stay, it'll become far less relevant as our immune systems learn to fight it - and yes, you will get it, at some point.

Some bright spots, coronaviruses mutate far less rapidly than influenza strains do, so immunity means somewhat more. Probably. We don't have much good data yet about how long immunity lasts for humans, but the lower mutation rate definitely helps, as it's the main reason flu vaccinations last for only one season.

We also largely can't stamp out influenza because of the vast animal reservoirs for it, with easy cross infection between animal and human populations. This is at least less true with regards to Covid-19. Probably. It definitely hopped over to us in the first place, and there's a confirmed report of infected tigers in NYC, but most likely there's a far lower cross species risk.

It's problematic in that it spread quite a bit around the globe in humans, but in other respects, its a lot better than the flu.

Except that at least a significant chunk of the production of goods is still happening. Food is still being produced at similar numbers. Houses are still being built, and housing is available. The economy is why farmers are plowing under their fields or selling beef at a loss while grocery stores and food banks are empty. Why people are sleeping in parking lots in Vegas while every hotel is vacant. We have the things we desire or need because of people doing the work, not "the economy", and anything that prioritizes the economy over the people doing the work during this crisis is missing the forest for the trees.

Production is being affected. In Maryland, food processing plans are being shut down, because the workers were infected, and infected people packing food is a terrible idea. Lack of packing places means that they simply can't process as much meat. So Tysons, unable to sell or process their meat, is simply killing and burying chickens instead. They don't have the facilities to house arbitrary numbers of chickens. Simply keeping them around isn't something they have the ability to do. So, in a very real sense, the production is simply lost.

[halfeye]

Some bright spots, coronaviruses mutate far less rapidly than influenza strains do, so immunity means somewhat more. Probably. We don't have much good data yet about how long immunity lasts for humans, but the lower mutation rate definitely helps, as it's the main reason flu vaccinations last for only one season.

This is mistaken, the common cold is a corona virus and we get half a dozen strains of that for every strain of the flu, we don't know yet how often this one mutates, but going by the common cold it could be really fast, or it might be very slow, we just don't know so far as I know.

We also largely can't stamp out influenza because of the vast animal reservoirs for it, with easy cross infection between animal and human populations. This is at least less true with regards to Covid-19. Probably. It definitely hopped over to us in the first place, and there's a confirmed report of infected tigers in NYC, but most likely there's a far lower cross species risk.

It's problematic in that it spread quite a bit around the globe in humans, but in other respects, its a lot better than the flu.

It's closer to the cold than the flu, the cold is less dangerous than the flu, this isn't.

Production is being affected. In Maryland, food processing plans are being shut down, because the workers were infected, and infected people packing food is a terrible idea. Lack of packing places means that they simply can't process as much meat. So Tysons, unable to sell or process their meat, is simply killing and burying chickens instead. They don't have the facilities to house arbitrary numbers of chickens. Simply keeping them around isn't something they have the ability to do. So, in a very real sense, the production is simply lost.

Cooked meat that isn't handled with bare hands after cooking ought to be alright. Mind you Britain doesn't buy in much chicken, so if you've got a glut, you're on your own.

[AMX]

This is mistaken, the common cold is a corona virus and we get half a dozen strains of that for every strain of the flu, we don't know yet how often this one mutates, but going by the common cold it could be really fast, or it might be very slow, we just don't know so far as I know.

No.
The "common cold" isn't actually a single disease - there's a bunch of different viruses causing it, only some of which are corona viruses.

Don't confuse "several completely different viruses causing similar symptoms" with "multiple strains of one virus."

[monomer]

No.
The "common cold" isn't actually a single disease - there's a bunch of different viruses causing it, only some of which are corona viruses.

Don't confuse "several completely different viruses causing similar symptoms" with "multiple strains of one virus."

Yes, the common cold is most commonly caused by a rhinovirus, though sometimes it is from a human coronavirus or even an influenza virus.

[Wardog]

This disease will become part of the eternal rotation of flu's we get.

Coronavirus. Is. Not. Flu.

Its a different disease, caused by an entirely different phylum of viruses.

Saying "it will become part of the rotation of flu" is like saying "measles will become part of the rotation of chickenpox".

[Kaptin Keen]

Coronavirus. Is. Not. Flu.

Its a different disease, caused by an entirely different phylum of viruses.

Saying "it will become part of the rotation of flu" is like saying "measles will become part of the rotation of chickenpox".

Hey, if you want that one, you can have it. I read in the news early on that both the flu and the common cold are varieties of corona viruses, and I've had zero reason or interest to question that, or research it. Also, I find it utterly without significance.

So: Yes, you're right, the differences are immense and they're not the same thing at all. Sorry for my mistake, and thanks for pointing it out.

[Leny Michaelson]

It's weird for me that everyone start paying attention to self-hygiene during the pandemic. I can't imagine that somebody didn't wash their hands once they are back home. It's natural stuff that I was taught as a child. So it's strange for me that people avoided such simply actions. Let's just all stay home and be safe!

[Brother Oni]

Hey, if you want that one, you can have it. I read in the news early on that both the flu and the common cold are varieties of corona viruses, and I've had zero reason or interest to question that, or research it. Also, I find it utterly without significance.

It has critical significance to developing a vaccine as different 'families' of viruses have different rates of mutation. The last I read, SARS-Cov-2 was relatively stable, so the virus they started working on a vaccine for a month ago, is highly likely to be the same virus in about 6 months time (or at least surface antigens are unlikely to have undergone sufficient antigenic drift to be significantly different for the purposes of the vaccine).

The 'normal' influenza virus drifts (or worse, shifts) with such regularity, that with the lead times for vaccine production, the best we can do is guess which strains are going to be around for this 'flu season and hope another strain doesn't show up.

It worries me sometimes that you display such a lack of understanding or concern with such apparent conviction.

[tyckspoon]

It's weird for me that everyone start paying attention to self-hygiene during the pandemic. I can't imagine that somebody didn't wash their hands once they are back home. It's natural stuff that I was taught as a child. So it's strange for me that people avoided such simply actions. Let's just all stay home and be safe!

Well, there are a number of people who think/thought that 'washing your hands' involved a two-second rinse in water, and even people who tried to do it correctly often didn't do the longer scrub needed to reliably clean microbes away. Plus the increased awareness of just how many times/in what situations you need to do it if you're really concerned about contamination, especially as concerns food preparation.

[Kaptin Keen]

It has critical significance to developing a vaccine as different 'families' of viruses have different rates of mutation. The last I read, SARS-Cov-2 was relatively stable, so the virus they started working on a vaccine for a month ago, is highly likely to be the same virus in about 6 months time (or at least surface antigens are unlikely to have undergone sufficient antigenic drift to be significantly different for the purposes of the vaccine).

The 'normal' influenza virus drifts (or worse, shifts) with such regularity, that with the lead times for vaccine production, the best we can do is guess which strains are going to be around for this 'flu season and hope another strain doesn't show up.

It worries me sometimes that you display such a lack of understanding or concern with such apparent conviction.

Yes, I agree - it's certainly relevant in a larger context. But for the purposes of what I'm trying to argue here, it doesn't change anything whether you wanna call it a flu, or cold, a plague or a tabby cat.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Yes, I agree - it's certainly relevant in a larger context. But for the purposes of what I'm trying to argue here, it doesn't change anything whether you wanna call it a flu, or cold, a plague or a tabby cat.

When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.

GW c

[sihnfahl]

So it's strange for me that people avoided such simply actions.

IMO, it's not that they 'avoided' it (which implies an active resistance), it's just something they didn't think of doing or making part of their routine, most usually because they're rushing.

One need only look at the number of E Coli infections each year... or C Diff...

[Joran]

It's weird for me that everyone start paying attention to self-hygiene during the pandemic. I can't imagine that somebody didn't wash their hands once they are back home. It's natural stuff that I was taught as a child. So it's strange for me that people avoided such simply actions. Let's just all stay home and be safe!

The one thing this pandemic exposed was how often I touch my face. I apparently love to touch my face.

Edit: And the other was how long I washed my hands (not long enough). I remember when it first started and people were recommending that you be able to sing "Happy Birthday" twice. I taught my kids that and now sometimes I wake up to my son singing Happy Birthday in my bathroom and it's heartbreaking.

[mjasghar]

The idea that the lockdown isn’t related to lowering of cases is frankly ridiculous at best and actively malicious at worst.
Comparing modern science to the guess work of the age of the Black Plague - really?
We know how it’s transmitted with the exception of wether pets can transmit it if allowed to wonder
And I would suggest you look at the reality of the lockdown in most western nations - it is mostly voluntary and the police aren’t meaning checkpoints on every street. So as soon as people get the idea the restrictions are going to be eased they preemptively start breaking the recommendations.
If you’ve decided you prefer the deaths to the economic hardship please be honest instead of reaching for outlier scientific studies that confirm your bias. The fact is that the USA has a death rate of 1000 a day and it’s likely to rise to 3000 a day at best.

[Rockphed]

The idea that the lockdown isn’t related to lowering of cases is frankly ridiculous at best and actively malicious at worst.
Comparing modern science to the guess work of the age of the Black Plague - really?
We know how it’s transmitted with the exception of wether pets can transmit it if allowed to wonder
And I would suggest you look at the reality of the lockdown in most western nations - it is mostly voluntary and the police aren’t meaning checkpoints on every street. So as soon as people get the idea the restrictions are going to be eased they preemptively start breaking the recommendations.
If you’ve decided you prefer the deaths to the economic hardship please be honest instead of reaching for outlier scientific studies that confirm your bias. The fact is that the USA has a death rate of 1000 a day and it’s likely to rise to 3000 a day at best.

In the US the rate of infection went from exponential growth to about linear growth about the middle of March. Most lockdowns in the US happened about a week later, but the rate of infection didn't go down. Sadly, the CDC is no longer updating their information on when sickness started, only their daily count of total infections so I can't tell you what was actually going on after about april 5th. The real test of the effectiveness of lockdowns is going to be if Sweden ends up with similar death rates to other western nations since they did not do nearly as hard of a lockdown as anywhere else. Some US states didn't lock anything down either, but they are generally the ones where simply living in that state counts as engaging in social distancing.

[mjasghar]

Check this one out especially the state by state one in orange bars
Note that states that had initially lower numbers and are now touting early relaxation have seen up spikes
In particular notice the armed protesters marching on state capitols and the subsequent spikes in the weeks after
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-...rus-in-the-u-s

[SaintRidley]

Worth considering how many states' "lockdown" efforts amounted to doing effectively nothing and then declaring they'd tried everything so we might as well stop doing things. I'm looking at you, Iowa.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: This is just a reminder that Real World Politics is a prohibited topic on this forum and should be read broadly to include acts and policies of governments and their agencies. As with all our prohibited topics, we recognize that this inhibits or even prevents some discussions here. That's fine, this might not be the place for all discussions.

[Kaptin Keen]

.. if Sweden ends up with similar death rates to other western nations ..

They will - unless their health sector gets overwhelmed, and there's no indication that's what's going to happen. This, of course, is opinion, and not a scientific fact (yet).

[Forum Explorer]

Production is being affected. In Maryland, food processing plans are being shut down, because the workers were infected, and infected people packing food is a terrible idea. Lack of packing places means that they simply can't process as much meat. So Tysons, unable to sell or process their meat, is simply killing and burying chickens instead. They don't have the facilities to house arbitrary numbers of chickens. Simply keeping them around isn't something they have the ability to do. So, in a very real sense, the production is simply lost.

I want to point out that this is due to people getting sick. So the whole 'don't shut down the economy' thing some people are advocating won't actually stop economic damage. Things would still shut down but instead they'd shut down because of sickness instead.

[Ibrinar]

In the US the rate of infection went from exponential growth to about linear growth about the middle of March.

Could you link the data you are using?