Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[viper37]

It is worth keeping in mind that the WHO advises against lockdowns except as a last resort to keep medical systems from being overwhelmed.

Which is pretty much what we've done in occidental countries, at least.

[Grey Fox]

It is worth keeping in mind that the WHO advises against lockdowns except as a last resort to keep medical systems from being overwhelmed.

Which is pretty much what we've done in occidental countries, at least.

and the thing Americans don't get. Especially our Climber extraordinaire.

[alfred russel]

It is worth keeping in mind that the WHO advises against lockdowns except as a last resort to keep medical systems from being overwhelmed.

Which is pretty much what we've done in occidental countries, at least.

and the thing Americans don't get. Especially our Climber extraordinaire.

I was responding to Tamas, who posted this last week in the lockdown check in thread:

I think my credentials as a proponent of lockdowns are beyond question, but at some point we will have to roll the ball down the hill and hope the vaccination level will keep it slow and manageable. The time might not be here just yet (seeing the Indian variant and all) but we got to be close.

[alfred russel]

Bigger picture, the definition of "lockdown" seems a hazy one, March 2020 I was sent a letter by my county that if I left my home for a non essential reason I faced a fine and up to 12 months in jail. I think that qualifies as a lockdown?

I bitched incessantly back then that it was counterproductive, too extreme and unnecessary.

I got a shit ton of grief back then, but is there any doubt at this point I was right? By the end of April the governor stepped in and pulled the plug on basically all restrictions and I was back at an indoor gym by the start of May. Cases got much higher during summer and winter peaks, but lockdown never returned (we just rolled with the punches) and the medical system never got overwhelmed. Georgia is more or less in line with the national average in overall deaths from covid.

[Barrister]

Bigger picture, the definition of "lockdown" seems a hazy one, March 2020 I was sent a letter by my county that if I left my home for a non essential reason I faced a fine and up to 12 months in jail. I think that qualifies as a lockdown?

I bitched incessantly back then that it was counterproductive, too extreme and unnecessary.

I got a shit ton of grief back then, but is there any doubt at this point I was right? By the end of April the governor stepped in and pulled the plug on basically all restrictions and I was back at an indoor gym by the start of May. Cases got much higher during summer and winter peaks, but lockdown never returned (we just rolled with the punches) and the medical system never got overwhelmed. Georgia is more or less in line with the national average in overall deaths from covid.

One thing I have heard, but can't really confirm, but given the public vs private systems in Canada and the US, plus the much greater % of GDP spent on health care in each country, the US has a lot more "slack" in it's health care system and was more able to roll with a big surge in Covid cases.  In Alberta we've been told they had to significantly cut back on elective procedures in order to expand ICU capacity, and they were very concerned just last month they were going to completely exceed capacity and start triaging patients (which is when we went into our third set of restrictions).

[alfred russel]

There is just an extreme amount of transparent nonsense in the covid response. A very recent but still epically stupid example: for our honeymoon we hiked around some forests to find mountain gorillas and chimpanzees in Uganda. You have to go with a guide to do this. They explained we have to take precautions to keep the gorillas and chimpanzees from getting covid-19 because they are very similar to us and could catch the disease: okay, fair enough. So the guide carried a spray bottle of hand sanitizer and when we found chimpanzees and gorillas he sprayed our hands with hand sanitizer.

We were supposed to stay 10 meters from the animals--what the fuck is spraying our hands with hand sanitizer going to do?

It just transparently seems like the outcome of a government meeting: how do we get the tourists to come back but not make people think we are ignoring covid-19 to make a few bucks?

[Barrister]

There is just an extreme amount of transparent nonsense in the covid response. A very recent but still epically stupid example: for our honeymoon we hiked around some forests to find mountain gorillas and chimpanzees in Uganda. You have to go with a guide to do this. They explained we have to take precautions to keep the gorillas and chimpanzees from getting covid-19 because they are very similar to us and could catch the disease: okay, fair enough. So the guide carried a spray bottle of hand sanitizer and when we found chimpanzees and gorillas he sprayed our hands with hand sanitizer.

We were supposed to stay 10 meters from the animals--what the fuck is spraying our hands with hand sanitizer going to do?

It just transparently seems like the outcome of a government meeting: how do we get the tourists to come back but not make people think we are ignoring covid-19 to make a few bucks?

There is definitely a lot of "Covid theatre" going on - in particular with disinfecting.  We've known for months and months that Covid-19 is both much more infectious through the air than we initially thought, but much less infectious through surfaces than we initially thought.  So we've introduced things like mask mandates, but we still have not done away with a lot of the sillier surface transmission steps.

Doesn't mean Covid-19 isn't a real threat though.

[Grey Fox]

I got a shit ton of grief back then, but is there any doubt at this point I was right?

Maybe but an ultimately useless position. You are Monday morning quarterbacking the original lockdown with the hindsight of Tuesday's data. 

[viper37]

Bigger picture, the definition of "lockdown" seems a hazy one, March 2020 I was sent a letter by my county that if I left my home for a non essential reason I faced a fine and up to 12 months in jail. I think that qualifies as a lockdown?

I bitched incessantly back then that it was counterproductive, too extreme and unnecessary.

I got a shit ton of grief back then, but is there any doubt at this point I was right? By the end of April the governor stepped in and pulled the plug on basically all restrictions and I was back at an indoor gym by the start of May. Cases got much higher during summer and winter peaks, but lockdown never returned (we just rolled with the punches) and the medical system never got overwhelmed. Georgia is more or less in line with the national average in overall deaths from covid.

You were partly right in the sense that outdoor transmission had a very low probability, something we didn't know yet, back then.

However, shelter in place orders are to make sure people don't spread the virus from their original place to any place they stop by, like a restaurant, or an hotel, or a friend's place.

It's not counter-productive as in it's how the virus spread: by proximity contact inside.

The idea isn't to prevent climbers from climbing, it's to prevent the virus from traveling.  You got a lot of grief because no one expected you to really travel nonstop from point A to point B with absolutely zero contact with anyone.

[alfred russel]

I got a shit ton of grief back then, but is there any doubt at this point I was right?

Maybe but an ultimately useless position. You are Monday morning quarterbacking the original lockdown with the hindsight of Tuesday's data.

No way (except for the useless part, all of languish is useless).

I'm not Monday morning quarterbacking (and certainly not with Tuesday's data): I was saying this at the time. Lots of posts about the response being unsustainable (as it was clear this wasn't going away in the short term) and unreasonable. I made statements about what I thought about what was happening on Sunday in real time, and now that it is Monday and we have more data to evaluate, doing just that.

[alfred russel]

You were partly right in the sense that outdoor transmission had a very low probability, something we didn't know yet, back then.

From extremely early studies about transmission in Wuhan, which I think I actually posted in this thread, outdoor transmission always seemed rare.

However, shelter in place orders are to make sure people don't spread the virus from their original place to any place they stop by, like a restaurant, or an hotel, or a friend's place.

It's not counter-productive as in it's how the virus spread: by proximity contact inside.

The idea isn't to prevent climbers from climbing, it's to prevent the virus from traveling.  You got a lot of grief because no one expected you to really travel nonstop from point A to point B with absolutely zero contact with anyone.

Restaurants and hotels were closed!

There seems a set of people oblivious to the obvious problem of closing outdoor recreation areas outside of cities (but within driving distance) but leaving them open in the city. Which was the general response used in the western world--even if the outdoor areas were just the streets.

The recreation areas I wanted to visit were closed. I was successfully prevented from accessing them. They tend to involve significant hiking and they are sparsely visited, but others are present so there is minimal risk of covid-19 spread at those parks, so by closing those areas a theoretical risk was mitigated. But it must be seen that an even bigger one was created: the open parks that I visited in the city instead had unprecedented crowds.

The same issue arises with boat ramps. These were closed because authorities were upset people were holding parties on boats. Which was a bad idea! But lots of people were just going fishing by themselves. And by closing the boat ramps, you didn't make the boaters disappear: those people went other places--and many of those parties probably moved indoors.

[Tamas]

There is just an extreme amount of transparent nonsense in the covid response. A very recent but still epically stupid example: for our honeymoon we hiked around some forests to find mountain gorillas and chimpanzees in Uganda. You have to go with a guide to do this. They explained we have to take precautions to keep the gorillas and chimpanzees from getting covid-19 because they are very similar to us and could catch the disease: okay, fair enough. So the guide carried a spray bottle of hand sanitizer and when we found chimpanzees and gorillas he sprayed our hands with hand sanitizer.

We were supposed to stay 10 meters from the animals--what the fuck is spraying our hands with hand sanitizer going to do?

It just transparently seems like the outcome of a government meeting: how do we get the tourists to come back but not make people think we are ignoring covid-19 to make a few bucks?

There is definitely a lot of "Covid theatre" going on - in particular with disinfecting.  We've known for months and months that Covid-19 is both much more infectious through the air than we initially thought, but much less infectious through surfaces than we initially thought.  So we've introduced things like mask mandates, but we still have not done away with a lot of the sillier surface transmission steps.

Doesn't mean Covid-19 isn't a real threat though.

Don't give up, just a few more years and you have a chance to convince him he wasn't unfairly treated when he had to cancel his hiking plans for that week back last year.

[alfred russel]

Problem: A highly contagious and deadly respiratory disease is spreading in your community: how do you prevent groups from meeting in indoor spaces, where it most easily spreads?

Solution: Close the vast majority of outdoor park space in the country, except for a small fraction in highly populated urban areas.

Tamas, I may be an abrasive asshole, but you've got to see the initial approach was pretty fucking stupid.

[Zoupa]

The initial approach was not perfect IN HINDSIGHT. Transmission data evolved over time. A little thing called the scientific method.

The fact that you frequented indoor gyms in May of 2020 is incredibly stupid. People exert themselves in gyms, breathing faster and deeper. I wouldn't use that fact when arguing how smart and always right you are regarding COVID-19 measures.

[Zoupa]

From March 15th 2020 to Feb 27th 2021, excess deaths in Georgia was 21,200 people. We'll probably never know how many lives could have been saved by stricter indoor lockdowns during that period, not to mention the number of patients that could have been spared lifelong consequences. Over 10% of Georgians contracted COVID-19 ( ) so I imagine that with over 1.1 million cases, that's thousands and thousands of people.

For comparison, 3.72% of Canadians contracted COVID-19, with much stricter lockdown measures.