Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[DGuller]

FYI, I'm right here.  If you want to respond to what I write, first person will work just fine.

[HVC]

You need to have just enough rules so that you can enforce them all, and then you have to actually enforce them.  Anything else is just a tragic governance mistake.

Not sure what you mean here. Sounds like your saying the equivalent of " laws against petty theft is too hard to enforce, let's make it legal". Which I'm sure you don't mean.

[DGuller]

You need to have just enough rules so that you can enforce them all, and then you have to actually enforce them.  Anything else is just a tragic governance mistake.

Not sure what you mean here. Sounds like your saying the equivalent of " laws against petty theft is too hard to enforce, let's make it legal". Which I'm sure you don't mean.

I'm talking about Covid rules.  There are only so many rules you can enforce, so pick the worthiest ones and go all-in on them .  You have make sure that everyone follows them, voluntarily or otherwise.

[merithyn]

I have several friends who are teachers who have written or updated their wills in the last month because as of today, they're expected to go back to school to teach. They are all high-risk, middle-aged women. It sucks that the kids might fall behind, but I'm not sure that it's worth killing teachers to make sure they don't.

[Oexmelin]

If they are teaching kids under 13, they should relax a bit.

Every studies so far show that kids under 13-14 rarely get covid; that when they get it, they rarely transmit it; and that it is actually less deadly for them  than influenza. The outbreaks in schools in places like Israel or the Netherlands have been shown to have been transmitted by adults.

https://missionlocal.org/2020/07/ucsf-grand-rounds-opening-the-schoolhouse-and-the-big-house/

[DGuller]

Here is an interesting study that popped up in my Google News feed: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-exposure-common-cold-coronaviruses-immune.html.  If 40%-60% of people never exposed to Covid still mount an immune response due to prior exposure to other cold viruses, what does that imply about herd immunity?  And is it possible that these lucky people who mount an immune response to Covid fight it off so quickly they never develop antibodies to it?

[Valmy]

If they are teaching kids under 13, they should relax a bit.

Every studies so far show that kids under 13-14 rarely get covid; that when they get it, they rarely transmit it; and that it is actually less deadly for them  than influenza. The outbreaks in schools in places like Israel or the Netherlands have been shown to have been transmitted by adults.

https://missionlocal.org/2020/07/ucsf-grand-rounds-opening-the-schoolhouse-and-the-big-house/

They are middle school teachers so they will be in a building with lots of 13 and 14 year olds plus other adults.

[Valmy]

I have several friends who are teachers who have written or updated their wills in the last month because as of today, they're expected to go back to school to teach. They are all high-risk, middle-aged women. It sucks that the kids might fall behind, but I'm not sure that it's worth killing teachers to make sure they don't.

The only thing I can see that can stop this mess now is a vaccine.

It still blows my mind that that Feds did not mount a Manhattan Project style emergency project on this months ago. But we do have some big pharma companies making some progress with a few bones tossed to the by the feds. I guess they are willing to print trillions to prop up the economy but only a few billion on the one thing that will save it.

Or at least that is what it looks like to me at this point.

[katmai]

If they are teaching kids under 13, they should relax a bit.

Every studies so far show that kids under 13-14 rarely get covid; that when they get it, they rarely transmit it; and that it is actually less deadly for them  than influenza. The outbreaks in schools in places like Israel or the Netherlands have been shown to have been transmitted by adults.

https://missionlocal.org/2020/07/ucsf-grand-rounds-opening-the-schoolhouse-and-the-big-house/

since Covid-19 is so new, studies coming out all the time, like this one that seems to contradict the other one

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200730141324.htm

[merithyn]

If they are teaching kids under 13, they should relax a bit.

Every studies so far show that kids under 13-14 rarely get covid; that when they get it, they rarely transmit it; and that it is actually less deadly for them  than influenza. The outbreaks in schools in places like Israel or the Netherlands have been shown to have been transmitted by adults.

https://missionlocal.org/2020/07/ucsf-grand-rounds-opening-the-schoolhouse-and-the-big-house/

The summer camp in Georgia belies this study, as 240 people got the virus,  most between the ages of 10 and 13.

I don't think anyone can say with any certainty that anyone will be safe unless or until there is a vaccine. Like katmai said, it's just still too volatile to make those kinds of declarations.

[Josephus]

Who is still going on cruises? Why are cruises still happening?
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/travel/cruises/2020/08/03/hurtigruten-covid-19-outbreak-passengers-crew-infected-cruise/5570867002/

1. People are stupid.

2. Stupid people are convinced bad stuff only happens to others.

[alfred russel]

The issue, for the MILLIONTH TIME, is that if you do as you please and climb that rock and fall, you risk your own life.

If you do as you please during a pandemic, you risk others.

This extreme individualism strain in the US is mind-boggling.

You have to be completely obtuse. You say it isn't about me. Cool. Then who is it about?

I just posted a study showing the effect of a lost year of education on life expectancy. Closing schools is going to leave children as a group worse off. How many people through middle age are getting their careers and lives upended by lockdowns?

There are about 56 million students in the US through high school. Lets say 30% of them can't get adequate schooling away from home. That is 16.8 million kids that are losing access to adequate schools. If each loses 0.6 years of life expectancy, that is 10 million years of life lost.

The average person dying of covid is losing 10 years of life expectancy--that 10 million years of life lost is equivalent to 1 million covid deaths.

We talk about the mortality numbers like they are significant, and they are in isolation, but not in terms of significantly disrupting all of society. Sweden is supposedly the poster child for an overly lax response. It has a current death toll of 564/million. I've been told that Canada is nailing the response: it is at 242/million. The incremental difference is so trivial: 0.03% of the population.

[Sheilbh]

I have several friends who are teachers who have written or updated their wills in the last month because as of today, they're expected to go back to school to teach. They are all high-risk, middle-aged women. It sucks that the kids might fall behind, but I'm not sure that it's worth killing teachers to make sure they don't.

Yeah I would be more cautious about re-opening schools in the US given the higher prevalence. I think it is possible to do safely and children are lower risk for both catching and transmitting covid, but that matters less if the disease is very widespread or if the government can't/isn't really implementing measures to make it safe. And I think it'll take one or two bad outbreaks which will get covered on the news before confidence in the entire approach (to the extent it exists) breaks down.

I've mentioned the UK have considered that pubs might have to close if schools re-open, it looks like Ireland have decided on that approach. Basically they're not re-opening pubs to prioritise schools, they're also moving to mandatory masks in indoor spaces.

[Tamas]

I have several friends who are teachers who have written or updated their wills in the last month because as of today, they're expected to go back to school to teach. They are all high-risk, middle-aged women. It sucks that the kids might fall behind, but I'm not sure that it's worth killing teachers to make sure they don't.

Yeah I would be more cautious about re-opening schools in the US given the higher prevalence. I think it is possible to do safely and children are lower risk for both catching and transmitting covid, but that matters less if the disease is very widespread or if the government can't/isn't really implementing measures to make it safe. And I think it'll take one or two bad outbreaks which will get covered on the news before confidence in the entire approach (to the extent it exists) breaks down.

I've mentioned the UK have considered that pubs might have to close if schools re-open, it looks like Ireland have decided on that approach. Basically they're not re-opening pubs to prioritise schools, they're also moving to mandatory masks in indoor spaces.

Yeah a big question mark in all of this and schools especially is that it is probably all fine to reopen with some safety standards in place but odds are, if an outbreak happens in one, parents will just not let their kids go.

Also I like the idea about closing pubs for opening schools. Clearly this whole pandemic thing will need to be a balancing act and such balancing makes sense to me.

[Eddie Teach]

Misplaced priorities.