Why did we stop caring about "flattening the curve"?
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the media is corrupt wrote:
Quasi-Boom wrote:
Floridian wrote:
Let's switch to the flaws of your arguments. Many hospitals did prepare during the relative calm in-between spikes. But what no one could have predicted is that America would have widespread Covid spikes across nearly all localities simultaneously. This precludes hospitals from sending staff over to other areas being affected, because every area is overwhelmed at the same time. We blew it.
Your analogy was an attempt to point out flaws in my argument. That's why we were talking about it, in the first place. Now, apparently backing away from your flawed analogy, you want to talk about something else. Why can't we stick to the topic, which was my post, and your criticism of it via an analogy?
They constantly move the goalposts. Because the end game was never about the pandemic.
^This. There will be government takeover. Socialism. Then communism. -
JonElk wrote:
Man, there is a lot to unravel here. Here are some thoughts:
- The concept of flattening the curve was to prevent hospitals from having their resources overrun. At first, doctors thought the lowest common denominator was ventilators. We were originally trying to flatten the curve to make sure we had enough ventilators. Ventilators didn't turn out to be helpful for most COVID patients. We are still trying to flatten the curve to keep our ICUs from overfilling and exposing our lack of hospital beds and staff.
- Hospitals and doctors were never in a position to prepare for a pandemic. That is not what they do. They treat sick people and give us advice on how to stay healthy.
- Hospitals were hurt by the pandemic. Grocery stores make big profit margins on items like deli meats and cheeses and prepared foods, but barely break even on commodities like milk. Hospitals make the majority of their money on elective outpatient surgery and imaging. Elective surgeries went to zero during the spring and hospitals hemorrhaged money and took on big losses. They could barely afford to keep the staff they had, let alone staff up or buy additional supplies.
- One million people got on airplanes yesterday in the US to travel for the holiday. This is 48% of the people that did so the Sunday before Thanksgiving 2019. Definitely a reduction, but way too many people moving around since over half of the virus transmission is now asymptomatic. This is certainly going to get bad.
- Natural herd immunity was never a goal. For this to take place, many millions of Americans would need to die.
- It is pretty simple. To stop the spread and deaths before the vaccine arrives: Wear a mask at all times out side the home. Do not mix with people outside your immediate family/bubble. Don't eat in public (or do activities that require removing the mask). Stay home except for essential travel.
What is most surprising to me during this crisis is that our society has shown a remarkable lack of creativity and flexibility. There are many ways to stay active, conduct business, communicate and live your life in this environment. No, it isn't exactly the way we used to do things, but if we get creative, follow the rules and band together, we can change our practices in the short term and beat this. If everyone whines that they can't get what they always get, can't go to the parties and concerts and restaurants and vacations they always did, and don't follow the rules, we won't beat this. As a consequence, a huge number of people will die, and many more will get COVID, recover and may suffer long term consequences that we don't yet understand. Keep in mind, nobody yet knows what long term health impacts a recovered 12 year old, 25 year old or 50 year old may deal with the rest of their lives. Wear a mask. Stay home. The vaccine will be here soon. Let's all keep each other safe in the meantime.
Peace.
"We can change our practices in the short term and beat this."
How do you define "beat this"? What does success look like?
0% cases? You really think that is a practical and attainable goal? -
A genuinely curious post leads to complete anarchy, classic letsrun. This thread has gone complete donkeyfeces. After reading all of this I fear I have lost the ability to form a rational thought. Thank god I'm not American.
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JonElk wrote:
Man, there is a lot to unravel here. Here are some thoughts:
- The concept of flattening the curve was to prevent hospitals from having their resources overrun. At first, doctors thought the lowest common denominator was ventilators. We were originally trying to flatten the curve to make sure we had enough ventilators. Ventilators didn't turn out to be helpful for most COVID patients. We are still trying to flatten the curve to keep our ICUs from overfilling and exposing our lack of hospital beds and staff.
- Hospitals and doctors were never in a position to prepare for a pandemic. That is not what they do. They treat sick people and give us advice on how to stay healthy.
- Hospitals were hurt by the pandemic. Grocery stores make big profit margins on items like deli meats and cheeses and prepared foods, but barely break even on commodities like milk. Hospitals make the majority of their money on elective outpatient surgery and imaging. Elective surgeries went to zero during the spring and hospitals hemorrhaged money and took on big losses. They could barely afford to keep the staff they had, let alone staff up or buy additional supplies.
- One million people got on airplanes yesterday in the US to travel for the holiday. This is 48% of the people that did so the Sunday before Thanksgiving 2019. Definitely a reduction, but way too many people moving around since over half of the virus transmission is now asymptomatic. This is certainly going to get bad.
- Natural herd immunity was never a goal. For this to take place, many millions of Americans would need to die.
- It is pretty simple. To stop the spread and deaths before the vaccine arrives: Wear a mask at all times out side the home. Do not mix with people outside your immediate family/bubble. Don't eat in public (or do activities that require removing the mask). Stay home except for essential travel.
What is most surprising to me during this crisis is that our society has shown a remarkable lack of creativity and flexibility. There are many ways to stay active, conduct business, communicate and live your life in this environment. No, it isn't exactly the way we used to do things, but if we get creative, follow the rules and band together, we can change our practices in the short term and beat this. If everyone whines that they can't get what they always get, can't go to the parties and concerts and restaurants and vacations they always did, and don't follow the rules, we won't beat this. As a consequence, a huge number of people will die, and many more will get COVID, recover and may suffer long term consequences that we don't yet understand. Keep in mind, nobody yet knows what long term health impacts a recovered 12 year old, 25 year old or 50 year old may deal with the rest of their lives. Wear a mask. Stay home. The vaccine will be here soon. Let's all keep each other safe in the meantime.
Peace.
Follow the rules? Who gets to make the rules? Cuomo, the mass murderer? Who? Politically active funding hungry experts? Or, all experts, doctors and scientist? The rules were arbitrarily created, a deviation from normal protocol for a normal virus, and then forced on everyone without a debate or a choice in the matter. Those are not rules, those are edicts from self-appointed kings. No, we should not follow the rules, people should use care and common sense and do their best...this is the USA, not Cuomoland. No, just no. There is also no evidence of long-term problems. This is straight CNN propaganda and extrapolation based on the fact that this virus take some time to recover from. It is a cold, precedent says long term issues should not be the case unless someone has a severe devastating case, but then a person would have long term issue from any severe infection. Asymptomatic people are not developing long term health problems and there is not evidence of this. That is pure scare mongering to perpetuate this nonsense.
Let me ask you this; what happens to a 95 your old senile person when they get a severe cold or pneumonia and instead of taking care of the person and getting them up and moving and out for fresh air, instead they are shoved into a room and not allowed to move? What happens? They get worse and die, every time. This response in 2020 to a normal rough cold virus has killed many many people and too many are too stupid and scared to admit that we may actually be killing people and not saving people. Why did we not trust our standards and precedent for severe flu and cold virus outbreaks and instead choose this idiotic and deadly chaos?
People challenging the narrative of 2020 are not the contrarians, they are all the ones saying what? Why are we doing things different this time, things that don't make sense? Why is this new approach being forced upon us without discussion, without a choice. We never should have bucked precedent for this crazy and devastating approach and I do contend this approach has killed more people than saved, killed more from both covid and from ignored health issues.
Lastly, none of what we have done has worked, so why are we doing more and harsher? It is beyond stupid. The effort for a vaccine is really the only thing we have done right all year. -
Did you live through this 8 months of golf is more important than lives?
I guess you didn't. well wake up, do what you ought to, and soon see what a real man in the Oval Office can do for ordinary people. -
SprintTriathlon wrote:
Did you live through this 8 months of golf is more important than lives?
I guess you didn't. well wake up, do what you ought to, and soon see what a real man in the Oval Office can do for ordinary people.
What has Joe Biden ever done for ordinary people? Start war sin their countries so they can die an early death? That was real kind of him. -
Runner10287 wrote:
Floridian3 wrote:
Do people really have to die so you can breathe all over your friends and family? Is that really necessary?!?!
Like this fella.
With freedom comes responsibility. This is totally lost on most Americans nowadays. I don't want a big or intrusive government at any level. One way to prevent that is to act like a responsible adult so the government doesn't have an excuse to step in take our rights way. Duh! -
Don't worry, the billionaire overlords have it all well in hand, and are no longer hiding their agenda,
https://www.amazon.com/COVID-19-Great-Reset-Klaus-Schwab/dp/2940631123
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRgUPMvlmpUKknXEB4cjTPj1k_panBnEj9fXw&usqp=CAU
"You will accept your microchip with pride and strive to keep your social credit score impeccable!" -
"Why did we stop caring about 'flattening the curve'?"
Literally yesterday a public-health official in one of the flyover states was quoted as urging the curve be flattened--this time because, although there are lots of ventilators available, the trained people to *run* them are in short supply. -
Lockdowns and social distancing are the result of a 15-year old's third place science fair project in 2006:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuDQ_3g53qc
DISOBEY NOW. -
Quasi-Boom wrote:
Whether you realize or not (and I'm betting not), this supports my point, and is consistent with two of the lame excuses you offered (see the list above) - "(2) no one knew this was coming, (3) no one knew when this was coming."
I never made these two points you keep harping on. You've spun these two points out of an earlier statement I made: "Many hospitals did prepare during the relative calm in-between spikes. But what no one could have predicted is that America would have widespread Covid spikes across nearly all localities simultaneously. ".
But straw men are easy to knock down.
OK so hospitals across the US, owned and run by many different people, are incompetent and/or lying about being overwhelmed and the media is carrying their water. That is your point? What do you suggest we do? Boycott hospitals? Skip our surgeries in protest? Refuse to go to the doctor when we're sick? Have the government step in and run them? Regulate them? Have a pandemic planning agency that is prepared to assist, supply, and coordinate? I bet you have no suggestions, you just like to complain. -
Floridian3 wrote:
Quasi-Boom wrote:
Whether you realize or not (and I'm betting not), this supports my point, and is consistent with two of the lame excuses you offered (see the list above) - "(2) no one knew this was coming, (3) no one knew when this was coming."
I never made these two points you keep harping on. You've spun these two points out of an earlier statement I made: "Many hospitals did prepare during the relative calm in-between spikes. But what no one could have predicted is that America would have widespread Covid spikes across nearly all localities simultaneously. ".
But straw men are easy to knock down.
Oh, yes you did try to make those two points, fool. In that flawed analogy about scaling IT servers that started this. Specifically, they are found in this part of the analogy: "sudden, temporary worldwide interest in your website for a few days due to some news" and "with 98 of them idle until such an event happens."
Strawmen are easy to knock down. In any case, are you now agreeing that those are NOT valid excuses? Are you now agreeing that it cannot be credibly said that the medical profession didn't know a national scale surge in Covid infections was coming in the fall of 2020? Are you admitting that would be a BOGUS excuse for lack of preparation? Or are you just denying you ever suggested that as an excuse, and reserving, in your typical dodging fashion, the ability to assert the excuse later? My guess, based on the mentality on display in your previous posts, is the latter (although of course, you'll never answer any of this one way or the other).
And are you serious about this: "But what no one could have predicted is that America would have widespread Covid spikes across nearly all localities simultaneously." Seriously? No one? EVERY credible epidemiologist in the country, and every single mathematical model regarding Covid, predicted that VERY thing. The only people surprised by this national surge in infections in the fall of 2020 are YOU and, according to you, the medical profession in the US.
Floridian3 wrote:
OK so hospitals across the US, owned and run by many different people, are incompetent and/or lying about being overwhelmed and the media is carrying their water. That is your point?
I didn't say they were lying. I specifically said, at least twice, that I will take them at their word that they are overwhelmed with Covid patients. So, it was absolutely not my point that they are lying or that the media is carrying their water on this. Strawmen, as you say, are easy to knock down.
You have an incredibly bad habit of almost deliberately not understanding the posts you are replying to, in your zeal to make your tangential and often irrelevant points. Odd behavior.
Floridian3 wrote:
What do you suggest we do? Boycott hospitals? Skip our surgeries in protest? Refuse to go to the doctor when we're sick? Have the government step in and run them? Regulate them? Have a pandemic planning agency that is prepared to assist, supply, and coordinate? I bet you have no suggestions, you just like to complain.
I do not know how to reduce what I see, and what the facts I recited above and below show, to be clear incompetence of the medical profession. Most of the silly rhetorical questions you tried above would, of course, not be a solution. It would seem to be a considerably complex problem to fix, given the scale of the industry and the incompetence.
What I DO know, is that YOU have completely dodged the simple question posed to you above: "Assume they are to be believed about being overwhelmed already . . . what is it YOU think that they actually have been doing?"
You have ALSO dodged ANY comment on the premise for that question (posted on page 4) which was:
"- In March and April, significant and relatively successful efforts were made to "flatten the curve"
- Starting in March and April and continuing since then, huge efforts were made by federal, state and local governments AND private industry (Medtronic, 3M, etc.) to procure supplies, create ramped up supply channels, and distribute massive amounts of money to hospitals (most of which are huge, cash rich profits centers to begin with)
- The flattened curve months (April-September) were intended as a period for hospitals to ramp up for what the majority of credible epidemiologists said was going to be a large "wave" of infections in the fall - hospitals were on notice and had 6-7 months to prepare for events everyone knew was coming on a national scale
- infections start rising in September, as predicted, and yet immediately we have reports of overwhelmed hospitals
- deaths still aren't as high as they were in March and April, and yet cries of "overwhelmed""
So, you work on finally addressing those - points that were ACTUALLY made in this thread and ignored by you - and maybe I'll ponder specific ways to reduce the incompetence of the medical profession (which the pandemic has boldly highlighted for us all). -
Quasi-Boom wrote:
What I DO know, is that YOU have completely dodged the simple question posed to you above: "Assume they are to be believed about being overwhelmed already . . . what is it YOU think that they actually have been doing?"
You have ALSO dodged ANY comment on the premise for that question (posted on page 4) which was:
"- In March and April, significant and relatively successful efforts were made to "flatten the curve"
- Starting in March and April and continuing since then, huge efforts were made by federal, state and local governments AND private industry (Medtronic, 3M, etc.) to procure supplies, create ramped up supply channels, and distribute massive amounts of money to hospitals (most of which are huge, cash rich profits centers to begin with)
- The flattened curve months (April-September) were intended as a period for hospitals to ramp up for what the majority of credible epidemiologists said was going to be a large "wave" of infections in the fall - hospitals were on notice and had 6-7 months to prepare for events everyone knew was coming on a national scale
- infections start rising in September, as predicted, and yet immediately we have reports of overwhelmed hospitals
- deaths still aren't as high as they were in March and April, and yet cries of "overwhelmed""
So, you work on finally addressing those - points that were ACTUALLY made in this thread and ignored by you - and maybe I'll ponder specific ways to reduce the incompetence of the medical profession (which the pandemic has boldly highlighted for us all).
There's only so many medical professionals in the USA. Hospitalizations are spread out across the whole country instead of being concentrated in a few areas like the first wave. Smaller, more rural states likely have less medical capacity than somewhere like NYC so get overwhelmed faster. All you have to do is look at a map of cases to understand this.
The answer was to ramp up medical supplies, etc. AND maintain effective distancing and mitigation policies through the late fall so winter weather would not case as big a surge. Most places, especially places that dodged a big first and second wave (rural midwest and others), were all-but-open through the whole fall. This is despite public health warning that winter weather was coming and would result in a surge of cases.
We still can't test everyone who wants a test in most places.
We failed! Trump admin failed.
Now we get to see 2k+ people die per day for the next few months. -
This is why I like analogies. They make people like you go nuts. You were acting like such a jerk throughout this thread so I couldn't resist. I do this with Nigerian scam artists, too. LOL
I guess now you understand the primary motivation for my "odd behavior". I confess! -
Floridian3 wrote:
This is why I like analogies. They make people like you go nuts. You were acting like such a jerk throughout this thread so I couldn't resist. I do this with Nigerian scam artists, too. LOL
I guess now you understand the primary motivation for my "odd behavior". I confess!
Your analogy was weak and flawed. It would be easy to come up with a better one, but you lack the capacity for abstract thinking. And whether you know it or not, your analogy offered up bogus excuses that did not help your opinion (as vague as it was).
You've added nothing, and failed to rebut a single point. You can't even answer simple questions that would support your own opinion, or make relevant comments on the flaws in my opinion (those rhetorical questions you drafted above were strawmen arguments, and showed more self-frustration, than critical thought). Everything you thought you cleverly posted, was easily shown to be mischaracterizations and/or a dedicated effort to not read what you were replying to.
This last feckless post of yours, which is also the last one I'll bother responding to, has all the indicia of trying to save face in a message board retreat, and shows you to be a "pigeon-on-the-chessboard" type of poster. Those are the worst types of posters, man. You don't want to be one of those when you grow up. -
umm, nope wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-P9lJQspq8
Typical millennials .... insert the f-word and they think they are suddenly an edgy genius. -
Quasi-Boom is either a retired professor of anthropology or USPS worker. Criticizes "hospitals" (as though it was their responsibility to create doctors out of thin air) but has never run anything of any degree of complexity in his life.
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Quasi-Boom wrote:
Floridian3 wrote:
This is why I like analogies. They make people like you go nuts. You were acting like such a jerk throughout this thread so I couldn't resist. I do this with Nigerian scam artists, too. LOL
I guess now you understand the primary motivation for my "odd behavior". I confess!
Your analogy was weak and flawed. It would be easy to come up with a better one, but you lack the capacity for abstract thinking. And whether you know it or not, your analogy offered up bogus excuses that did not help your opinion (as vague as it was).
You've added nothing, and failed to rebut a single point. You can't even answer simple questions that would support your own opinion, or make relevant comments on the flaws in my opinion (those rhetorical questions you drafted above were strawmen arguments, and showed more self-frustration, than critical thought). Everything you thought you cleverly posted, was easily shown to be mischaracterizations and/or a dedicated effort to not read what you were replying to.
This last feckless post of yours, which is also the last one I'll bother responding to, has all the indicia of trying to save face in a message board retreat, and shows you to be a "pigeon-on-the-chessboard" type of poster. Those are the worst types of posters, man. You don't want to be one of those when you grow up.
Floridian's analogy may have been a bit broad, but his or her point was loud and clear to me, for what it's worth. Quasi is wrong on his face.
"While the hospital can add beds and equipment, "we can't create doctors ... we can't create nurses to take care of patients," she said. " ... I think we're all just really, really scared of what's to come."
From this article at 9pm tonight:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/24/health/us-coronavirus-tuesday/index.html
