Does social distancing even matter? Read on...

amother

Navy

Mon, Apr 20 2020, 9:14 am

The problem all along was that we have so little information. First we thought it was just a mild flu, and then it turned out to be far worse. The death projections were high but BH so far they've proven to be incorrect.

Will it turn out that SD was not the best approach? Maybe. Will we know what the best approach should have been? Probably not for a long time.

For now, operating with the little information we do have, SD is the safe approach. Hopefully we can ease out of it really soon and start rebuilding.

southernbubby

Mon, Apr 20 2020, 9:54 am

The demographics of Sweden are very different from those in America which may have a bigger effect on infection and death rates than whether or not schools are in session. We can't be Sweden although those who want America to be a socialist Utopia similar to Sweden need to remember what America did to destroy that possibility.

Dr Oz predicted that we can reopen schools if we are willing to accept a 2 to 3 percent increase in the death rates. That's the reality if we want a somewhat normal life.
Obviously no society can function if the majority of it's citizens are prevented from working for long periods of time. OTOH, social gatherings of 50 people are probably going to be preferred to larger gatherings, even when people are free to choose. This of course will affect the economy even though the government is not preventing people from gathering.
Work places with poor protection for employees have been forced to close because the majority of workers are too sick to work or are afraid of falling ill. Obviously they can't do business until they address that.

amother

Lemon

Mon, Apr 20 2020, 9:59 am

southernbubby wrote:

How many theoretically preventable COVID deaths are we willing to accept is the basis for all of this - including the initial shut downs.

southernbubby

Mon, Apr 20 2020, 10:14 am

amother [ Lemon ] wrote:

How many theoretically preventable COVID deaths are we willing to accept is the basis for all of this - including the initial shut downs.

The initial projections if there was no effort made to shut down society was an initial death rate in the millions. While the majority might be elderly, particularly those in nursing homes, 39% would probably be deaths in the working population and probably many children would be orphaned.
We can't turn this into a Democrat conspiracy or any other election year maneuver. Health officials currently advocate laying low and may eventually allow more herd immunity to develop if that's really possible.

amother

Pewter

Mon, Apr 20 2020, 10:19 am

I am the wife of a Hatzalah coordinator. At the beginning of the debate a few weeks ago I posted a description of what it was like during the first rounds of calls that came in.

I don't know how to find it since I posted amother, but if that wasn't enough to convince anyone that social distancing matters, then I don't know what is.

There is such a clear rise and fall in the patterns according to the social activity of the community that I think we can use it as a case study!

amother

Lemon

Mon, Apr 20 2020, 10:20 am

southernbubby wrote:

Right - and many people claim those projections were faulty. so why not just 'open up shop' fully now? How much death are we willing to accept? I don't think its a political question.

amother

Fuchsia

Mon, Apr 20 2020, 10:21 am

amother [ Lemon ] wrote:

How many theoretically preventable COVID deaths are we willing to accept is the basis for all of this - including the initial shut downs.

I think the question is even more nuanced then that. How many theoretical covid deaths that are prevented were prevented in people who are going to die anyway of something else in the near future. According to the Imperial College scientist behind the initial predictions, many of those who are dying would have died regardless of something else.

Before everyone jumps on me saying everyone has a right to live and no life is worth more than another, I agree with you. But the reality of life is that people die. Now that that is the reality, is it worth shutting down our economy and causing thousands of deaths (thousands of people will die as a result of the shutdown, both young people and older people) for people who were going to die regardless? I don't have an answer but it's a question worth asking.

I also firmly believe that had most of the country engaged in less restrictive SD then we could have devoted a lot more resources to protecting those who are most vulnerable. Instead the most vulnerable have been abandoned in nursing homes.

amother

Fuchsia

Mon, Apr 20 2020, 10:25 am

amother [ Lemon ] wrote:

Right - and many people claim those projections were faulty. so why not just 'open up shop' fully now? How much death are we willing to accept? I don't think its a political question.

Again, this is not an all-or-nothing debate. We can do A LOT of mitigation while still allowing people to go back to work. People who can work from home should still do so. People should wear masks, wash their hands, limit their interactions. The majority of at risk people aren't working anyway so they can substantially limit their interactions.

Yesterday I went grocery shopping. There were at least 10 people who were well above 65 waiting in line to go to the grocery store. That is ridiculous. Those people should not be going grocery shopping. So why exactly are we doing this if even older people won't stay home?

amother

Pewter

Mon, Apr 20 2020, 10:27 am

amother [ Fuchsia ] wrote:

It is so clear to those in the medical industry because they are seeing firsthand the difference in their ability to deal with cases that come in when the load is slowed.

Not sure how many times people need to hear this, but no one ever said that social distancing meant that people will be guaranteed not to get sick. All the medical professionals were begging for was to SLOW it down so that they could deal with it.

Of course some of the deaths could have been prevented! If there were enough resources available to deal with them in a normal manner.

amother

Fuchsia

Mon, Apr 20 2020, 10:32 am

amother [ Pewter ] wrote:

And at the same time hospitals are furloughing people and shutting down. I agree that this was the right move for the past month for NY and NJ. But rural hospitals were already hurting and this is putting many of them out of business. Many of them had no coronavirus cases and were definitely not overwhelmed. What is going to happen when someone in rural Kentucky has a heart attack and the hospital is closed or doesn't have the staff to care for him because they closed for a coronavirus wave that never materialized? He'll die. His blood will be on everyone's hands. That's why the approach we took was absurd. The tristate area and the West Coast should have shut down and limited travel to other states. I live in NY/NJ and I think that would have been the best approach.

southernbubby

Mon, Apr 20 2020, 10:35 am

amother [ Fuchsia ] wrote:

When there were fewer restrictions, grocery store personnel, Amazon employees, etc, were falling ill and dying. Some stores may closed to the public and exist to process orders for delivery, as long as it's possible to do it without killing the workers.
I am not sure what will save the nursing home population but most nursing home staff claim that they never got proper PPE. I am not sure that we can protect those vulnerable people unless we hire a much bigger staff and equip them with mass protection and make visitors see them from behind a plexiglass window
Yes, I agree that we can't go on forever this way but this disease is extremely contagious and we at least need time to get a handle on dealing with it before telling everyone to go back to the life that we had only a few weeks ago.

amother

Fuchsia

Mon, Apr 20 2020, 10:38 am

southernbubby wrote:

Had we not shut everything down, we could have provided PPE to the nursing homes. Had we not just spent $2 trillion on a stimulus package, we probably could have used some government aid to raise salaries of nursing home workers to attract more people to the profession.

Of course people are going to fall ill and die everywhere. I haven't seen any conclusive study that shows that grocery workers are dying at a higher rate than everyone else.

amother

Lemon

Mon, Apr 20 2020, 10:40 am

amother [ Fuchsia ] wrote:

Why don't you have an answer? To have an answer you have to have an opinion on how much "extra death" you are willing to tolerate. How else are you going to measure "worth"?

Or if you want it more nuanced - how much 'extra death' of people who would otherwise have x+ number of months left to live had there been no virus.

southernbubby

Mon, Apr 20 2020, 10:42 am

amother [ Fuchsia ] wrote:

The pork plant closure in South Dakota is a perfect example of what is happening in rural areas. Many small rural hospitals don't have intensive care units or top specialists. Many rural people work in trucking or some other job that brings them in and out of the community and then they go to church and infect others.

As a member of the AK club, I read articles aimed at my generation and they warn us those idyllic rural areas don't have the medical infrastructure to deal with illnesses that require sophisticated treatment.

amother

Fuchsia

Mon, Apr 20 2020, 10:44 am

amother [ Lemon ] wrote:

Why don't you have an answer? To have an answer you have to have an opinion on how much "extra death" you are willing to tolerate. How else are you going to measure "worth"?

I mean I have an answer for myself. I can't have an answer for society that's why I'm not and never will be a policy maker. But the reality of the situation is that people are not just going to stay home indefinitely. You can already see that from the various protests. So someone who's job it is has to come up with an answer

amother

Lemon

Mon, Apr 20 2020, 10:48 am

amother [ Fuchsia ] wrote:

So you do have an answer - why did you say you didn't?

southernbubby

Mon, Apr 20 2020, 10:55 am

amother [ Fuchsia ] wrote:

We had to move very quickly. Had China been more forthcoming, and had the rest of the world put these plans into motion, we might have been ready for this and had better plans in place.
I live in Monsey and both the Hispanic and frum communities had a deluge of cases. The frum grocery stores were desperate for workers. It may be more of a Chinese mentality to kill off one group of workers and then recruit a new batch.
Apparently many major grocery chains had workers die and there were many workers out sick but many sick workers with no job security went to work anyway and infected others. Then many stores and warehouses started giving 2 weeks paid leave. Then we realized that 2 weeks still means sick and contagious people are going to work.
This virus took us by surprise when maybe it shouldn't have.

amother

Saddlebrown

Mon, Apr 20 2020, 10:56 am

amother [ Pewter ] wrote:

Everyone echoes this. However it is still not enough to convince me that it helps. There were other viruses in the past that had similar patterns - starts aggresively and slows down obviously after 50% of population has already been infected.

My husband spoke to hatzolo members. He said in the beginning out of 160 calls a day - 22 were actually hospitalized. A lot of it was the panic it created amongst us.

Another thing we dont know for sure is how long it takes from the start of infection to the end of it, so we cant prove that the timing we 'quarantined' slowed it down. (Which we never fully complied with) One day it was bad, 2 days later, they sent msgs that everything improved.

And like I said there were ppl locked down, and still getting sick or dying. In Italy and US as well.

The fact that this dr said this and that is all speculation. Even Dr. Fauci keeps changing the stats.

I know majority wont agree with me, but it is the way I see it. I havent seen any clear correlation. As much as we want to believe we are taking care of it, Im not sure we are doing the right thing overall.