Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[ulmont]

I mean - wouldn't the obvious thing to do if you actually cared be to compare SD to other states that are similar to SD in all those OTHER variables, if you want to try to isolate the effect of mask and mandates?

I think there's too many variables.  I think the biggest factor for New York (and New Jersey, and Louisiana, and to a lesser extent California although California is too big so it doesn't show up) was getting infected early on, before doctors knew how to recognize and treat covid, and that early infections is the biggest single factor in mortality rates.

Past that, I dunno what the best comparators are for South Dakota.  We could look at the neighboring states as a real rough first cut:

8 South Dakota
11 North Dakota
17 Iowa
32 Minnesota
34 Montana
35 Wyoming
39 Nebraska

...and that does seem to suggest that South Dakota uniquely (or mostly uniquely; North Dakota looks bad too) fucked up the response by comparison to their geographically near neighbors.  What factor was that South Dakota fucked up?  Probably all of them.

[DGuller]

The argument is being made that SD had a shitty outcome, and part of the reason for that shitty outcome was how the government handled the crisis.

Now, you can argue that perhaps the reasons for the shitty outcome have little or nothing to do with mask use, if you want. But you have to actually MAKE that argument. Just noting that some places with masks use had shitty outcomes as well is rather lazy, an obviously so.

New York had rather stringent mask mandates and compliance, and still had a lot of deaths. If you don't care about thinking, I guess you could then conclude that masks don't do anything at all. But also noting that NYC has one of the densest population centers in the world along with one of the busiest international traffic hubs in the world might suggest to those who actually care about understanding instead of point scoring might recognize that in fact the factors that go into overall outcomes are complex - but that doesn't mean that individual variables are still not important.

So my response to someone noting that New York had less than great outcomes as well when South Dakota is noted, is to question why they would even try to compare such radically different areas when trying to isolate a particular variable, and wonder whether they are actually motivated by any interest in learning anything at all.

I mean - wouldn't the obvious thing to do if you actually cared be to compare SD to other states that are similar to SD in all those OTHER variables, if you want to try to isolate the effect of mask and mandates?

I think the more pertinent issue is that NY deaths were frontloaded, and were put in motion before masks became a thing.  Obviously what is needed here is a multivariate statistical analysis, but only scientists can do that, so who cares what conclusions they come up with?

[alfred russel]

I mean - wouldn't the obvious thing to do if you actually cared be to compare SD to other states that are similar to SD in all those OTHER variables, if you want to try to isolate the effect of mask and mandates?

Yeah.  The thing is South Dakota, all other things being equal, should have escaped Covid fairly lightly.  It has a very low population density, whereas New York was always going to have a harder time due to it's high density.

I understand Florida Governor DeSantis is taking a victory lap for his handling of the pandemic.  Dude, you're governor of a state with a near-tropical climate that allows people to be outside a lot.  Florida was a lot better situated than almost any other state in the union to handle Covid before you lifted a finger.

The Florida governor should be taking a victory lap. California is roughly in line with Florida: California has deaths/million of 1,328 versus Florida's 1,443. Florida has a much older population, and while Florida had some of the most lax restrictions in the country, California had some of the most stringent.

[alfred russel]

What if someone actually studied this and had the results published in a peer reviewed journal? Oh wait that has happened, lets see what they have to say:

Assessing mandatory stay‐at‐home and business closure effects on the spread of COVID‐19

Abstract

Background and Aims

The most restrictive nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) for controlling the spread of COVID‐19 are mandatory stay‐at‐home and business closures. Given the consequences of these policies, it is important to assess their effects. We evaluate the effects on epidemic case growth of more restrictive NPIs (mrNPIs), above and beyond those of less‐restrictive NPIs (lrNPIs).

...

Conclusions

While small benefits cannot be excluded, we do not find significant benefits on case growth of more restrictive NPIs. Similar reductions in case growth may be achievable with less‐restrictive interventions.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13484

[Valmy]

How is California inline with Florida? Northern Florida maybe inline with the very southern area of California but California goes very far north and also burned down last year. I find this assertion they are somehow similar geographically or in some other sense not very compelling. Northern California is nothing like any place in Florida. Are they also similarly urban?

But, to be fair, I am not very familiar with what exact types of restrictions both are doing or how they compare.

[Valmy]

What if someone actually studied this and had the results published in a peer reviewed journal? Oh wait that has happened, lets see what they have to say:

I find it kind of tiresome to be going over this again and again and again and again and again for almost a year but generally I think it has been fairly clear what sort of restrictions get results and what ones do not. I wish politicians would focus on the ones that produce results, but most most of these things are done out of political pressure and not a scientific study of the situation...at least in the United States anyway.

[Sheilbh]

What if someone actually studied this and had the results published in a peer reviewed journal? Oh wait that has happened, lets see what they have to say:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13484

I've seen lots of objections to that paper and there have been other papers including by the Max Planck Institute and in the (also peer-reviewed) Lancet which indicate the opposite.

I find it kind of tiresome to be going over this again and again and again and again and again for almost a year but generally I think it has been fairly clear what sort of restrictions get results and what ones do not. I wish politicians would focus on the ones that produce results, but most most of these things are done out of political pressure and not a scientific study of the situation...at least in the United States anyway.

I'm not sure it is that clear what work and what don't. Not least because they're not introduced at random or for shits and giggles, but because cases are getting out of hand and normally several measures are introduced at once. So it's not easy do disentangle which restriction produce which impact and how effective that is. Plus that probably varies a little bit with variants.

From a distance it seems a lot of this has become very political in the US so the importance of the restriction to the disease doesn't always seem connected. For example all of Europe re-opened schools, the UK has closed them again in response to the new variant but they're re-opening next week as the first measure to be lifted from our latest lockdown. I'm not convinced that masks are so effective that they deserve the fetishisation they've had and I don't think there's any reason to think they need to be used outside.

Personally I suspect the most effective measure would probably have been a focus on ventilation from the very start (something that Japan definitely has) because we've known from relatively early on that it's key in how this transmits in a way that washing hands or masks outdoors aren't. There was a really good piece - I want to say in the WSJ - on this and how the early signs came from NBA data.

[alfred russel]

How is California inline with Florida? Northern Florida maybe inline with the very southern area of California but California goes very far north and also burned down last year. I find this assertion they are somehow similar geographically or in some other sense not very compelling. Northern California is nothing like any place in Florida. Are they also similarly urban?

But, to be fair, I am not very familiar with what exact types of restrictions both are doing or how they compare.

Florida isn't directly in line with California. Also if you want to compare restrictions, there are such a long list of them at the state, county and town levels that have been constantly changing the past year that it is probably impossible to make any meaningful distinction (not to mention different testing regimes, health care measures, community outreach, etc.).

So its cool to say that each state is unique and can't be compared with others, but we shouldn't just say that when the data comes back in ways we don't like.

[Barrister]

I'm not sure it is that clear what work and what don't. Not least because they're not introduced at random or for shits and giggles, but because cases are getting out of hand and normally several measures are introduced at once. So it's not easy do disentangle which restriction produce which impact and how effective that is. Plus that probably varies a little bit with variants.

From a distance it seems a lot of this has become very political in the US so the importance of the restriction to the disease doesn't always seem connected. For example all of Europe re-opened schools, the UK has closed them again in response to the new variant but they're re-opening next week as the first measure to be lifted from our latest lockdown. I'm not convinced that masks are so effective that they deserve the fetishisation they've had and I don't think there's any reason to think they need to be used outside.

Personally I suspect the most effective measure would probably have been a focus on ventilation from the very start (something that Japan definitely has) because we've known from relatively early on that it's key in how this transmits in a way that washing hands or masks outdoors aren't. There was a really good piece - I want to say in the WSJ - on this and how the early signs came from NBA data.

I get that it's hard to track the effectiveness of any individual step.  But I know in Alberta our case numbers have tracked almost perfectly with the strengthening / loosening of various restrictions combined with seasonality.  Spring 2020 has an initial ramp up that was then stifled by the harshest lockdown conditions.  Many but not all restrictions lifted by May/June led to a quiet summer, but one that quickly ramped up as we got into the fall.  The re-imposition of restrictions in November / December (though not exactly the same as the prior spring) immediately led to a decrease.  And now even a modest re-opening causes our case numbers to plateau, rather than continue to fall.

Ventilation is a hard factor to focus on, as it would require substantial and expensive renovations of many buildings to make a significant difference.  Sure in some cases you should open a window if you can, but that's about it.  Some of the early studies even showed that in some cases strong air flow could actually spread the disease.

[alfred russel]

What if someone actually studied this and had the results published in a peer reviewed journal? Oh wait that has happened, lets see what they have to say:

I find it kind of tiresome to be going over this again and again and again and again and again for almost a year but generally I think it has been fairly clear what sort of restrictions get results and what ones do not. I wish politicians would focus on the ones that produce results, but most most of these things are done out of political pressure and not a scientific study of the situation...at least in the United States anyway.

The politics of restrictions seem to have run away from the reality that nothing is being enforced and it is all based on voluntary compliance.

A couple examples: you probably know Georgia has no mask mandate. My fiance recently went to a bachelorette party in Savannah and they did a bar crawl. She was super uncomfortable because the bars were apparently completely packed and no one was wearing a mask--even the workers. She apparently stopped wearing a mask after a while out of peer pressure and got a covid test when she got home. So shame on Georgia for not having a mask mandate! But it actually didn't matter--because Savannah had a mask mandate, it is just being universally ignored.

Last weekend we were driving home from a trip to Alabama, and stopped in Rome to eat at a barbecue joint. No idea if they have a mask mandate, but I swear when we walked in to eat everyone was staring at us because we were the only ones wearing masks. This is Marjorie Taylor Greene's district--I'm guessing that they probably won't get vaccines either because those are an obvious plot by Bill Gates to implant mind control chips or something.

Unsurprisingly, on a per capita basis, rural Georgia is getting hit as hard as Atlanta (where people take things much more seriously). Is this the fault of the government response or because rural people are stupid and prone to dumb conspiracy theories?

My experience in rural areas says it is about the same, whether it is Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, Utah, Nevada, or Alaska.

[Sheilbh]

I get that it's hard to track the effectiveness of any individual step.  But I know in Alberta our case numbers have tracked almost perfectly with the strengthening / loosening of various restrictions combined with seasonality.  Spring 2020 has an initial ramp up that was then stifled by the harshest lockdown conditions.  Many but not all restrictions lifted by May/June led to a quiet summer, but one that quickly ramped up as we got into the fall.  The re-imposition of restrictions in November / December (though not exactly the same as the prior spring) immediately led to a decrease.  And now even a modest re-opening causes our case numbers to plateau, rather than continue to fall.

Yeah agreed - that's very similar to the UK. We had a bit of a spike in September when universities and schools went back. Then really a seasonal spike in November/December, combined with a more transmissible variant and the disastrously bad decisions on Christmas followed by a hard lockdown and rapid decline in cases.

We can definitely track the measures and their effectiveness in broad terms and in the aggregate but I'm not necessarily sure what the effective policies are (or even what reflect policy decisions and what reflect behavioural shifts by individuals) as opposed to a really broad-brush approach of lockdown v not. That's why it's a really bad policy and one that I think countries only really use when they have to.

Ventilation is a hard factor to focus on, as it would require substantial and expensive renovations of many buildings to make a significant difference.  Sure in some cases you should open a window if you can, but that's about it.  Some of the early studies even showed that in some cases strong air flow could actually spread the disease.

Yeah opening windows is good - doing stuff outside too.

And I get the early studies point - but I follow an account on Twitter of one year ago covid stories and lots of very well-credentialed people, including the scientists, got lots of things wrong

[Barrister]

And I get the early studies point - but I follow an account on Twitter of one year ago covid stories and lots of very well-credentialed people, including the scientists, got lots of things wrong

No, I didn't make my point well.  Ventillation done poorly can spread Covid.

The early study I'm thinking of was from a restaurant.  They tracked one infected person at one table.  That person infected the other people they ate with, but because of the large air conditioner right behind them, also infected the next two tables in a straight line from the A/C (while other tables were fine).  There was lots of air flow, but it hurt not helped.

[DGuller]

Unsurprisingly, on a per capita basis, rural Georgia is getting hit as hard as Atlanta (where people take things much more seriously). Is this the fault of the government response or because rural people are stupid and prone to dumb conspiracy theories?

It is a fault of the government to some extent.  There is no appetite for enforcing the laws, or taking on law enforcement that decides they don't want to enforce mask mandates.  That said, you can't force people to not be suicidal when they're determined to be suicidal.

[The Larch]

Do they have a death wish?

[ulmont]

Do they have a death wish?

Death is preferable to life in Texas, especially in the summer.  [spoiler]Pay no attention to which states border Texas[/spoiler]