Julia Webb Must Read LetsRun: She Gets It!!

Hey, they left out "wrinkles, thin skin, baldness, missing teeth, hairy eyebrows and ears, menopause, saggy boobs and scrotums, hearing loss, far sightedness, etc. Maybe some of these conditions are co-morbid with covid!? And not high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes.

I think the idea that any "statistic" is vaild at this incredibly early point in the outbreak, with such limited testing having been done, is just ignorant. Here are the facts as I know them: Europe started seeing high levels of this virus two weeks ago. Testing is still not widespread. Their hospital systems are being overrun already, and the people overrunning them are not all dying.

In the US only a small number of people have been tested. The numbers of positives that are growing everyday are not a sign of the expansion of the virus (necessarily) but an indication of how many more people had been tested 2-5 days ago.

So...

Until testing is truly ramped up, and everyone who even is worried about having the virus can get a go / no go, we will not have a broad enough data set to truly determine infection rates, death rates, age demographics, full recovery rates, long term health impacts, etc.

My second point is that this is not a simple calculation that is cost of economy vs number of deaths. The reason cities are shutting down is to limit the strain on the healthcare system and allow testing, manufacturing, headcount, and knowledge to catch up. If it was a simply question of trading the US economy not dipping into depression vs 55K old people, then the economy will win, but its not. The number of potential deaths across demographics is simply unknown, and more importantly the strain that is put on the healthcare system that leads to increased deaths from other issues, as well as long term health impacts to both covid 19 and all other patients, is unknown.

If we shut down for weeks to let the data, the healthcare manufacturers, the doctors, the hospitals and our governments catch up, this could be a short lived (painful) blip. If we go back to treating every day as business as usual the effects (while truly unknown) can drag out for up to 18 months (if a vaccine can be found to be effective).

It is very scary to see the economic impact. It is also very scary to walk outside or go to the grocery store, not knowing if your catching a virus that could never show up and allow you to infect your friends and family, or show up and put you in the hospital, or show up and kill you and then your family. That stress is making every day feel long and hard. We need to all realize we are very very early in this outbreak, especially in the US. We need better data to understand what is truly happening, and that data wont be worth anything until we have more testing. Without that data, making sweeping life altering decisions, seems irresponsible, at least to me.

Stay home if you can. Wait this out, once we get real data, you can start to understand who on your block or in your company or in your family has the virus and then we will know how to proceed with how to reintegrate our society, safely.

When you decide to take measures that will result in the premature deaths of millions of the elderly, those who have a life expectancy from that point of 5-10 years or more, which is the case for many 79-80 year olds, then you are hastening their deaths and essentially turning natural into artificial death, a product of human choice and circumstances.

Does she want on her head the unnecessary early deaths of millions of actual human beings with reason and self-consciousness?

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let the economists speak wrote:
Also, there's probably epidemiologists and economists who have calculated the costs-benefits of all of this, which is why most of the world has shut down.

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bloviating wrote:
But why should it be any different when elementary students can be gunned down and the same idiots cry about their make believe right.

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Is she an actual medical professional?

That is also a hefty claim about how she’s going to act when she’s 75+. That’s such an easy thing to say when she is 30 or 40 (idk how old she actually is) years away from that age.

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Juice Springsteen wrote:
Is she an actual medical professional?

That is also a hefty claim about how she’s going to act when she’s 75+. That’s such an easy thing to say when she is 30 or 40 (idk how old she actually is) years away from that age.

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let the economists speak wrote:
Isn't it being hypocritical to be Pro-Life, but when it comes to the elderly "Let them die"?

Also, there's probably epidemiologists and economists who have calculated the costs-benefits of all of this, which is why most of the world has shut down.

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If in December or January when this was discovered they had some form of mass testing this could have been contained for a lot longer. That would have bought some time to order supplies, train staff, find treatment, setup quarantined zones in the hospitals.
Because that never happened we are in an out of control situation. Young people can die as well if they don’t get a ventilator so the more people who get it the younger the dead will be.
The people in charge messed up big time and they should suffer consequences for that.

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godpe wrote:
high bp? hardly a serious old person condition and easily treatable.

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The Webbs are exactly correct. In addition, they are hard working business owners and and highly successful in all of their pursuits. They carry their own weight and don't rely on government assistance to fund their livelihood.

If we close the world down to save a few person's with many underlying medical conditions for this disease - then we need to close it down permanently from this day forward.

Didn’t she claim that Jesus’s blood was coming out of a treadmill? lol

I'm glad that the word hoax isn't being used anymore. Julia doesn't claim it's a hoax. She realizes that the disease is real and that society's behaviors will contribute to the outcome. What we do from here all depends on what society deems to be acceptable loss. It's certainly a tradeoff. We give up freedoms in return for saving lives. Some will die regardless. Some will live regardless. How much are we willing to give up to save the uncertainties. Somewhere along the line everyone has an idea about what is acceptable loss. That line exists for everyone somewhere. It just exists at different places. We wouldn't have stopped the world if we knew 10 people would die, even if they were perfectly healthy and stopping the world for two weeks could save them. It wouldn't have happened. Even if we only had to shut the whole world down for a day.

Some people don't believe the models. Some people are not able to comprehend what it would mean to actually have the amount of people die that have been predicted if we do nothing. I don't know if Julia falls into either of these categories or if she has looked at it, believes it, and finds it to be acceptable loss.

Going forward though, I think policy is going to be driven by what society, and largely policymakers, decide is acceptable loss. The price of our personal freedoms is a high one and the economic cost will be huge as well. After just a week of this, we're starting to hear more people speak up about opening things up not because of a hoax, but because the loss of life is more acceptable to them than the price of saving those lives.

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Ozzie wrote:
I'm glad that the word hoax isn't being used anymore. Julia doesn't claim it's a hoax. She realizes that the disease is real and that society's behaviors will contribute to the outcome. What we do from here all depends on what society deems to be acceptable loss. It's certainly a tradeoff. We give up freedoms in return for saving lives. Some will die regardless. Some will live regardless. How much are we willing to give up to save the uncertainties. Somewhere along the line everyone has an idea about what is acceptable loss. That line exists for everyone somewhere. It just exists at different places. We wouldn't have stopped the world if we knew 10 people would die, even if they were perfectly healthy and stopping the world for two weeks could save them. It wouldn't have happened. Even if we only had to shut the whole world down for a day.

Some people don't believe the models. Some people are not able to comprehend what it would mean to actually have the amount of people die that have been predicted if we do nothing. I don't know if Julia falls into either of these categories or if she has looked at it, believes it, and finds it to be acceptable loss.

Going forward though, I think policy is going to be driven by what society, and largely policymakers, decide is acceptable loss. The price of our personal freedoms is a high one and the economic cost will be huge as well. After just a week of this, we're starting to hear more people speak up about opening things up not because of a hoax, but because the loss of life is more acceptable to them than the price of saving those lives.

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yep, you're right there big fella, we're all just a bunch of dumb hicks that don't know our way around.
Here's some facts for you: The US is currently around 53K known infections (likely 5-7x that many in reality) and just over 700 deaths. When Italy was at 53K known infections, they had 4800+ deaths. We have 1/7 the death rate. Fact.
Here's another fact: We have 7x the population of Italy. We should be outpacing them by a country mile in both infections and deaths. Regardless of testing rates, deaths should still be outpacing them on an exponential level, simply due to our massive disparity in population. It's not. Period. And it's not going to. Period.

Mrs. Webb may not be 100% correct but she's certainly not as wrong as you want to make her out to be. Fact is, the facts are not supporting this level of quarantine for Covid over a long duration. Perhaps a couple/few weeks but it's simply not supportable to shut the entire economy down in order to change say 5000 deaths down to 3000 deaths... and let's face it, it maybe be a week or more before we ever hit that number.

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Kvothe wrote:
The only people suggesting opening up the US are those who don't understand statistics and exponential growth. If we do that now, or in 2 weeks, before this has peaked, hospitals will be overrun, many, many more people will die. Italy has "only" had around 7k deaths so far, with less than a 5th the US pop. When we reach the same point of the curve, we'll have over 35k deaths (actually more because the US healthcare system is worse). Without treatment, that number ballons to 70-100k. That is acceptable to people, just so they can go to their fav band's concert or out to eat?

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not my real name wrote:
yep, you're right there big fella, we're all just a bunch of dumb hicks that don't know our way around.
Here's some facts for you: The US is currently around 53K known infections (likely 5-7x that many in reality) and just over 700 deaths. When Italy was at 53K known infections, they had 4800+ deaths. We have 1/7 the death rate. Fact.
Here's another fact: We have 7x the population of Italy. We should be outpacing them by a country mile in both infections and deaths. Regardless of testing rates, deaths should still be outpacing them on an exponential level, simply due to our massive disparity in population. It's not. Period. And it's not going to. Period.

Mrs. Webb may not be 100% correct but she's certainly not as wrong as you want to make her out to be. Fact is, the facts are not supporting this level of quarantine for Covid over a long duration. Perhaps a couple/few weeks but it's simply not supportable to shut the entire economy down in order to change say 5000 deaths down to 3000 deaths... and let's face it, it maybe be a week or more before we ever hit that number.

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Kvothe wrote:
The only people suggesting opening up the US are those who don't understand statistics and exponential growth. If we do that now, or in 2 weeks, before this has peaked, hospitals will be overrun, many, many more people will die. Italy has "only" had around 7k deaths so far, with less than a 5th the US pop. When we reach the same point of the curve, we'll have over 35k deaths (actually more because the US healthcare system is worse). Without treatment, that number ballons to 70-100k. That is acceptable to people, just so they can go to their fav band's concert or out to eat?

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Yes and no. I've been trying to keep track of the numbers day to day as compared with Italy. I've been calling February 23rd day 0 for Italy and March 5th day 0 for the USA. Whether that is an equivalent Day 0 is not relevant if we are looking at exponential growth and the important thing to do is to compare the growth rate. On 4 of the first 5 days, Italy's daily growth rate was greater than the United States. That's good news. The bad news is that on 10 of the next 14 days, The US growth rate was higher. Also, on two of the days, I don't have any data. So in the last 2 weeks, our growth rate is higher 10 times, Italy's is higher twice, and there are two days that I don't know. It should be noted though that today is one of the day's where it was lower. The numbers are close enough that most of the differences are moot, especially when considering the differences in reporting not only between countries, but even between our own states. It seems reasonable to me to treat Covid-19 like it is behaving very similarly here in the US to how it did in Italy, which does not seem very reassuring to me.

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pro life, not wrote:

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let the economists speak wrote:
Isn't it being hypocritical to be Pro-Life, but when it comes to the elderly "Let them die"?

Also, there's probably epidemiologists and economists who have calculated the costs-benefits of all of this, which is why most of the world has shut down.

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Most "Pro Lifers" are only pro unborn life. Once people are born, they don't care.

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