WTF. Boston mayor says lockdown has been too effective, not enough people have been infected so he'll keep lockdown in place

Then why tf they making me run with a mask on

10% of the Boston population is a massive amount of people.

Keep in mind that the 10% number is based on a TOTAL of 756 people that were tested for antibodies. Testing was done across two zip codes.

What's really interesting is that they said only 2% of the people who tested positive for antibodies never had any symptoms. This is shockingly low as we've been hearing about percentages significantly higher than this (up to 50% in some reports).

Considering how unreliable antibody testing has been so far, I'm not sure how much stock i would put in this study.

Some_Local wrote:

Keep in mind that the 10% number is based on a TOTAL of 756 people that were tested for antibodies. Testing was done across two zip codes.

What's really interesting is that they said only 2% of the people who tested positive for antibodies never had any symptoms. This is shockingly low as we've been hearing about percentages significantly higher than this (up to 50% in some reports).

Considering how unreliable antibody testing has been so far, I'm not sure how much stock i would put in this study.

Yes the antibody test may not be accurate but that's almost irrelevant to what the OP is complaining about.

The logic of this is kind of funny. Basically the Mayor is saying, "We're not going to open up until a certain set of the population has the disease." Well, unless you are going to wait for a vaccine, why not open up now and then you'll get to a higher percentage quicker.

Initially, everyone was told, "We're locking down to flatten the curve so the hospitals aren't oveerrun." Well guess what, that's the case there and yet they are still locked down.

If the mindset is, "we're all going to get it eventually, then they need to open up now." If the mindset is "We're not doing anything until" a vaccine, then tell us that now.

Don't lie to us. When they told me a mask wasn't hellpful, I knew that was a lie and made no sense.

That's because...

https://summit.news/2020/05/18/psychotherapist-lockdown-zealots-are-behaving-like-cult-members/

psy op continues wrote:

That's because...

https://summit.news/2020/05/18/psychotherapist-lockdown-zealots-are-behaving-like-cult-members/

Cool link bro. Doesn’t stink of agenda at all.

I don't think that's what the Mayor means. All he's saying is, you need to be careful as you reopen as 90% of people can still get the disease (no herd immunity). So you need to carefully re-open and watch for problems, which is what we're doing here. When the numbers of infected are low, that's easier to do.

If you want to talk about what's crazy, IMO the fact that houses of worship are the first thing to reopen in Mass. is nuts. I understand that they don't want to deal with the lawsuits, but these are enclosed spaces packed with old people for extended periods -- seemingly the most dangerous situation.

News like this just continues to prove these shut downs have been purely political. Also, "flatten the curve" was just a lie since now these Democrat politicians keep moving the goal posts and coming up with new excuses to keep everything shut down and keep people out of work. The goal was never to "flatten the curve". The goal was to crash the economy.

Do you guys really not get this? He means the evidence suggests a ton of people can still get COVID, thereby indicating that hospitals can still be overwhelmed if cases spike, meaning we need to continue to proceed cautiously. Not difficult to understand. Also, MA has moved into the "reopening" phase anyway, so not as if he's really saying the lockdown will continue forever. Just proceed with caution, based on the evidence. Unbelievable how politicized this has become.

rojo wrote:

Basically the Mayor is saying, "We're not going to open up until a certain set of the population has the disease."

That is not what Mayor Walsh said. He said that the majority of the population hasn't been exposed yet. When read in conjunction with his first point (that we've done a relatively good job so far), he's trying to underscore a point. My takeaway is that he is reminding people that the shut-down was "successful," and this is WHY most Bostonians weren't exposed. Thus, a "go slow" approach to re-opening is warranted right now, in order to continue to protect ourselves from exposure.

I think this is a responsible approach by an urban public official in one of the hardest-hit states.

The real story is that antibody testing is showing a very low infection rates in places like Spain, where fatalities were high. That goes against the argument that the virus is no more deadly that the flu as advanced by the bogus work by Ioanidis at Stanford. But the big takeaway on the low infection rate is that there are lots of targets for the virus to plot a comeback as things open up. If we were smart, we would not be opening places where the virus is likely to spread. People should not be gathering indoors together unless it is absolutely necessary. Bars, restaurants, churches, offices, etc. should all stay closed for the foreseeable future until testing is ubiquitous and frequent. Texas has loosened its restrictions very slightly and cases are already going up.

Oh, and if you thought the mayor of Boston said that more people needed to catch the virus before they could open up, you are not smart.

https://www.vox.com/2020/5/16/21259492/covid-antibodies-spain-serology-study-coronavirus-immunity

Precious Roy wrote:

Oh, and if you thought the mayor of Boston said that more people needed to catch the virus before they could open up, you are not smart.

All we've seen here is painful cherry-picking and blatant misrepresentation to diminish the world's hard work at controlling COVID. A lot of LRC posters have exposed their limited reasoning skills over and over.

One can very easily argue that while this disease can be serious for some people, it saves its biggest punch for the oldest and sickest people. The data we have seems to prove that.

The plan to keep everything closed in Boston is a bit baffling at this point. The virus may never see a vaccine. A cure is even less likely. It may be 12-18mos before we have any effective treatments. Do you really think Boston will just remain closed for the next year?

Again, only 10% of those tested during this antibody test were positive. Not 10% of Boston. 10% was out of 756 people. Hardly a large test group. Coupled with the fact that antibody testing has been very unreliable, how can we put so much stock in this study that it dictactes a different response from the rest of the entire country?

I'm all for being reasonable about this. However, I'm finding it very difficult to see Marty's decision as reasonable when the decision is based on a very small sample.

So which one is it now? This is so highly contagious that all these people have it and are asymptomatic or not as many people have it so the mortality rate is high. Whichever one fits the liberal agenda for the day.

Should I even read the piece from Vox if I already know exactly what it will say just by it being from Vox?

Most local governments are in CYA (cover your arse) mode. They don’t want to open up, see a spike in deaths (which will happen whenever you open up) and then be blamed for the deaths. Instead local governments are looking for a hail mary save i.e. the virus will just go away on it’s own or maybe a vaccine will be created soon. Both of these options are very unlikely.

What he's saying is that while the lockdown has worked, they expected that more people by now would have been exposed and recovered. Since the number that haven't been exposed is higher than they expected, they're more wary of opening things up, because more people are still at risk than they expected.

But figuring that out requires critical thinking.

not moving nothing wrote:

What he's saying is that while the lockdown has worked, they expected that more people by now would have been exposed and recovered. Since the number that haven't been exposed is higher than they expected, they're more wary of opening things up, because more people are still at risk than they expected.

But figuring that out requires critical thinking.

OK, to proceed with that line of thinking further, what if the lockdown stays in place for 2 more months and the rate of exposure rises to only 15%? Do you have to continue the lockdown? Assume further that the lockdown continues 2 months more and the rate of exposure only rises to 20%, far below herd immunity. Do you have to continue the lockdown?

We were told at the beginning that a containment strategy wouldn't work, but we needed a lockdown in order to prevent the health care system from being overrun. What has happened is that in the vast majority of locations in the country, the hospitals are at all time low occupancy rates. What is the goal of the lockdown? If it was to flatten the curve, are we trying to flatten it for years and years?

^ this x10

What's the threshold here? There's no comment on this coming from the administration.

With no vaccine, no cure, no treatments, eventually, most of us are going to get it. What's the rationale? Save as many as you can for now? I fear that strategy is worse for the majority of the population than it is for select high risk groups that need to be especially wear of this.