57 COVID deaths in GA today: Post-opening spike starting?

THOUGHTSLEADER wrote:

gligduff wrote:

Apparently it is a human tendency to prefer the wishful ("hope" instead of analytics) approach; it is more comforting to think happy, dreamy thoughts, rather than looking at reality.

Absolutely. I don't care where you fall on the political spectrum, but this quote from our President yesterday(!) should piss you off.

“It’s going away. It’ll go away. Things go away. No question in my mind that it will go away,” Trump said during a White House press briefing.

There is no substance, statistics or facts. It is just more out-loud, wishful thinking that for many of our leaders has been the action plan as opposed to something that could actually work.

So far we've heard from the top about the sunlight and hot weather making it go away, herd immunity making it go away, partial travel bans making it going away, half-assed lockdowns making it go away, wonder drugs making it go away and so on...

THOUGHTSLEADER wrote:

gligduff wrote:

Apparently it is a human tendency to prefer the wishful ("hope" instead of analytics) approach; it is more comforting to think happy, dreamy thoughts, rather than looking at reality.

Absolutely. I don't care where you fall on the political spectrum, but this quote from our President yesterday(!) should piss you off.

“It’s going away. It’ll go away. Things go away. No question in my mind that it will go away,” Trump said during a White House press briefing.

There is no substance, statistics or facts. It is just more out-loud, wishful thinking that for many of our leaders has been the action plan as opposed to something that could actually work.

So far we've heard from the top about the sunlight and hot weather making it go away, herd immunity making it go away, partial travel bans making it going away, half-assed lockdowns making it go away, wonder drugs making it go away and so on...

agip wrote:

Fat hurts wrote:

Absolutely correct. And I would say that Americans are more prone to this than most.

That is why so many gleefully went along with reopening too early. As I have been saying since the beginning of this thread, there was no rational reason to believe that things would turn out well. All the science said we needed to stay in lockdown until the numbers got much lower.

Now we are faced with a situation where the only solution we have is an even longer, more difficult lockdown. But almost everyone on this thread is still in denial and still thinking happy, dreamy thoughts, rather than looking at reality.

Fats don't you think what will happen is;

1) Schools try to open but shut down pretty quickly

2) We wait for a vaccine and try not to lose too many people. Masks and social distancing are pushed.

3) Vaccine arrives and the epidemic slowly recedes.

I would be very surprised if you are right and we have to do a long difficult lockdown. I don't think many want that. Certainly I don't think politicians want that, in the weeks before an election.

Fat hurts wrote:

agip wrote:

Fats don't you think what will happen is;

1) Schools try to open but shut down pretty quickly

2) We wait for a vaccine and try not to lose too many people. Masks and social distancing are pushed.

3) Vaccine arrives and the epidemic slowly recedes.

I would be very surprised if you are right and we have to do a long difficult lockdown. I don't think many want that. Certainly I don't think politicians want that, in the weeks before an election.

Yes on #1.

#2 is bad public policy and morally corrupt. We know that just pushing masks and social distancing doesn't work. So #2 says that we allow death and suffering because we are too lazy to do a shutdown.

#3 might never happen. We have to be prepared for that possibility and it is foolish to put all your hopes in a magic bullet.

As for what I think will happen, it's pretty obvious that if Tiny is re-elected then the death and suffering will be allowed to continue until we have a technological solution. And if that solution doesn't arrive we will stay in a prolonged depression.

If Biden is elected we will go through some turmoil until January 21st. After that, I am confident that he will do whatever is needed to eventually turn things around. If vaccines or breakthrough therapeutics are not available then we will have lockdowns again.

agip wrote:

Fat hurts wrote:

Yes on #1.

#2 is bad public policy and morally corrupt. We know that just pushing masks and social distancing doesn't work. So #2 says that we allow death and suffering because we are too lazy to do a shutdown.

#3 might never happen. We have to be prepared for that possibility and it is foolish to put all your hopes in a magic bullet.

As for what I think will happen, it's pretty obvious that if Tiny is re-elected then the death and suffering will be allowed to continue until we have a technological solution. And if that solution doesn't arrive we will stay in a prolonged depression.

If Biden is elected we will go through some turmoil until January 21st. After that, I am confident that he will do whatever is needed to eventually turn things around. If vaccines or breakthrough therapeutics are not available then we will have lockdowns again.

I'm not sure your timeline makes sense....

the election is only a month before the vaccine comes out.

And February, when biden actually has some power to do something, is when the vaccine should be rolling out. So if we don't get a lockdown in the next month or 2...lockdowns aren't going to happen ever. And no way Trump is going to push for one.

Seems to me we're now waiting for the vaccine (unless the vaccines fail, then we probably will lock down when Biden take office.)

Precious Roy wrote:

THOUGHTSLEADER wrote:

120 deaths in Florida. That is a much better number than last week. **Hopefully** it's not just a one-day reporting blip. I read yesterday added a record 620 or so hospitalizations, but hopeful that was itself a blip.

Where did you get that? The official state dashboard has 225 new fatalities for Aug. 5.

You really cannot know anything definitive until at least a week after data is reported. Many states are backfilling data after their preliminary reporting and many are making changes to try to align with the shift from CDC to HHS for COVID data collection. Texas had some pretty bad fatality numbers two weeks ago and then they dumped almost 700 additional deaths to the count over the weekend as they changed their data collection procedures.

These backfilling practices have been a big problem in that the day to day data often makes it look like rates are beginning to decline when they have in fact only plateaued at a very high rate.

Whodunit wrote:

Just a month ago, Sweden was labeled the “world’s cautionary tale” for its laissez-faire approach to fighting the coronavirus. It famously decided not to close its schools, restaurants or bars, and it told its citizens that there’s no need to mask-up. When the death toll surged in late April, and the country looked overmatched by the fast-moving virus, its officials sounded defensive.

The country’s Public Health Agency developed and implemented Sweden’s approach, and its chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, became the face of the crisis.

While other countries were locking down shops, schools, and public life, Sweden was the outlier, trying to manage the disease with the least possible impact on the economy. The prominent Swedish virologist Lena Einhorn, for one, called the Sweden approach “madness.” Seeing the mortality rate climb in Sweden, Norway decided to close its border with its chief trading partner.

By a per-capita basis, the coronavirus outbreak in Sweden has been one of the world’s deadliest—worse than the United States, France, or any Nordic neighbor. But in the past six weeks, Sweden has seen a remarkable turnaround. New daily cases are down to multi-month lows. Hospital admissions are close to zero, and just 44 Swedes died of COVID-19 in the past seven days, official numbers show. At the same time, coronavirus cases are spiking around continental Europe.