Lockdown proponents: do you realize that we'd have to continue this for another 5-6 years?

David S wrote:

The whole idea is to avoid getting to the point where that happens. Having said that, NYC might well be on its way.

Still?

We've been hearing we are on the precipice in NYC for over month.

Yet still have not fallen over it.

Did the math! wrote:

Just lift the restrictions and let everyone build immunity now so that we can get over this thing by summer.

Our experts want to keep us locked down in the summer when there are no influenza hospitalizations. Then when flu season starts up in the fall we can add covid and influenza cases together and cram our hospitals with cases. We have to listen to the experts.

Testing numbers wrote:

One third? Not even close. It's more like 1/50th of those infected actually get tested.

I think it's more like 1/15th (NYC antibody sampling and Miami point toward that ballpark). So let's say we got to 15 million in 2 months (where really only one month came close to overwhelming the healthcare system). We would basically reach herd immunity within a year.

But, herd immunity is only important in places where social distancing is difficult to achieve (e.g. NYC with its subway system). In more rural areas, simply washing hands more often, not shaking any hands and wearing a mask when working in close proximity to others should do the trick.

The whole concept of “lockdowns” is exactly upside down, exactly the wrong way any sane society would respond to this circumstance. It’s the vulnerable who should be shielded while nature takes its course among the general population, who should go about life as usual.

It’s best to let herd immunity develop as fast as it naturally will, at which time the virus recedes from lack of hosts (and is likely to mutate in a milder direction along the way). This is the only way to bring a safer environment for all including the most vulnerable.

The whole concept of self-isolation and anti-social “distancing” is radically anti-human. We evolved over millions of years to be social creatures living in tight-knit groups.

I suspect most of the internet police-state-mongers are not only fascists at heart but are confirmed misanthropic loners who couldn’t care less about human closeness.

How ironic that the lockdownists like to portray their submission as the exercise of "responsibility" when it's the radical opposite, an abdication of public citizen responsibility. Just one of their many Orwellian inversions of language and thought.

A new analysis by Edge Health, a leading provider of data to NHS trusts, warns that a second and then a third wave of “non-corona” deaths are about to hit Britain. [Call them lockdown & panic deaths.] Unless radical solutions can be found to resume normal service and slash waiting lists, the NHS may be forced to institute a formal regime of rationing.

The “second wave” is already breaking. It is made up of non-coronavirus patients not able or willing to access healthcare because of the crisis.

[Because of the insane, hysterical and panicked reaction to what would have otherwise been comparable to a flu season.]

Based on ONS and NHS data, Edge Health estimates these deaths now total approximately 10,000 and are running at around 2,000 a week.

They include a wide range of typical emergency admissions, including stroke and heart attack patients, as well as those with long term chronic conditions such as diabetes who are not able to access the primary or secondary care services they need. Many are sadly dying in their homes. Others are just getting to hospital too late.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/two-new-waves-deaths-break-nhs-new-analysis-warns/

David S wrote:

If hospitals get overwhelmed then like 5% of the world's population will die along the way, including people with normal medical conditions. The whole idea is to avoid getting to the point where that happens. Having said that, NYC might well be on its way.

This is a BS, made up scare-tistic. They are removing the hospital ships and tearing down the emergency field hospitals they set up because they were never really needed in the first place. The death rate for this is extremely low and even in New York where it spread rampant on the subway, the system was rarely overwhelmed. 7.9% of the population is hospitalized each year, very few for actual emergencies. 35% of those are for pregnancy, birth or newborns (those services are largely unaffected, other than they have to wear advanced PPE everywhere and have to test everybody). 13.3% are for things like joint replacements an broken bones (again, not emergencies and many can be performed in surgery centers with recovery in rehab centers. 13.5% are for digestive issues, 15.5% are for respiratory issues and 22.8% were for circulatory issues. The issue with the lockdown and the ban on voluntary medical procedures in most states is that many medical providers were furloughed and hospitals are having to be bailed out by the government because many have been operating at below 40% capacity (and it pregnancy and child birth occupy 35% of their capacity, that means only 5% of their capacity was used for COVID. These mass deaths that people were predicting never materialized, even in areas with high infection rates. Should you wear a mask out in public and wash your hands? Yes. Should you get back to living your life? Absolutely.

Influenza has basically already disappeared in most states due to the lockdown:

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm

Right now it is at 2.2%, which is well below normal for this time of year.

Vaccine shills are the biggest morons ever. Sorry, but we aren't gonna stay in our houses for two years waiting for Bill Gates to drop some magic needles on the world. Time to open up.

It's worth noting that almost all of the states in the ILI map (which includes COVID) are well below where they would be for just the regular flu (that is why the map is almost entirely green). It is just that hotbed of disease in the northeast that is really showing increased activity.

I'm quitting this mask/gloves bullshit come May 1, Friday.

Are you with me?

Stand up for freedoms. I fought for 'em, ya puzzies.

I'm going to the beach, too. F'M all.

I haven't read this thread, but:

The whole country will be "open" by June. We'll also still be losing 3K people daily in June. This is just how it's going to be, until we start losing 8K people daily in November, with flu season and coronavirus firing up again. Our "new normal" will be that coronavirus is the largest killer in the US. World travel will be interesting, given our situation.

Maybe a vaccine in a couple years, but herd immunity will take effect. Eventually.

There is currently no evidence that people who recovered from COVID 19 are immune. The current lockdown regimen is intended on keeping the virus from overwhelming the health system. By in large, the lockdowns have succeeded in preventing rationing of care. That is not to say that health systems in the northeast, New Orleans, Detroit, Albany, GA and other hot spots haven't been tested to their limits.

The big problem with our lockdowns is that they were way too late in many places and way to permissive in many others. There has been almost no effort to remove positive family members and quarantine them. There have been too many exceptions to lockdowns for businesses that are not really essential. And testing has been way too scarce.

We are going to be playing lockdown ping pong for a long time unless we get serious about attacking the spread of the virus. There are many examples of countries that have been able to get the spread under control and get back to a new normal (S. Korea, New Zealand, Finland, Germany, etc.). If you can get to where they are, you can control new outbreaks through testing and quarantines without having to do massive lockdowns.

A vaccine may not end the virus like was accomplished with polio and small pox. But it may get us to a point of enough collective immunity that we can return to normal while controlling outbreaks with good testing and quarantine measures.

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/25/844939777/no-evidence-that-recovered-covid-19-patients-are-immune-who-says

Few here seem to ever consider a middle ground. It's either "let 'em all die!" or "let's tank the whole capitalist system!". The threat remains but, the system will have to adapt to the new reality. There will be winners and losers like there are in any big change.

We will have to wear masks when out and about and gatherings will need to be smaller. Consumerism will need to be curtailed - no more mindless ambling in large crowded shopping malls and fewer stores will exist. More things will be purchased online for home delivery. We will cook more and eat out far less. Restaurant dining will become an expensive "event" reserved for special occasions not something you do out of laziness or a lack of food in your pantry. Take out and delivery will continue for the masses but, the cost will go up.

More office work will be done remotely. This will gut commercial real estate, mass transit, auto sales, and gasoline consumption. On the plus side, the air will get cleaner and many office parks and towers will be converted into housing adding more affordable supply in overpriced markets. People will also become healthier with the reduction in commuting stress and the time lost to sitting in traffic breathing noxious fumes.

Economies will be come more locally based. With many department stores and national chains failing, the opportunity for local entrepreneurs will be enhanced. People will still want to shop at stores for something unique that can't be ordered from Walmart, Costco, or Amazon. This is an opportunity for boutique retailers, mom and pops, and young innovators to enter the market with original products and services.

International travel will again become the province of the monied classes. Flights will get expensive and countries will start requiring visas to enter. Overall, this will help to minimize the spread of pathogens internationally while keeping cultural and environmental treasures from being overrun by mindless tourists more interested in Instagram likes than learning and cultural exchange.

Since this is a running board, I speculate that races will have to change . There will likely be more knowledge gained over the next year or two to assess the risks to larger gatherings of people. Will there be less road racing events? Yes. RDs will go under and corporate sponsors will be much harder to find. Will the remaining events change? Yes. I think that large marathons will require qualifiers to get in much like Boston always has. This will distill the fields down to fitter athletes with less risk of exposure/deadly consequences. Smaller races will shift dates to warmer weather months with less illness (avoiding the usual flu season) and may utilize wave starts or age-group starts with appropriate time in between to spread fields for greater safety. Things like bubble and color runs will cease to exist. I also think that a return to locally produced, minimalist racing will occur featuring "boring" courses in parks, mall parking lots, and office parks - no gimmicks, shirts, medals the size of dinner plates, bands every mile, etc. Pay $10 and race for personal glory on a certified 5K loop for a time, a ribbon, and bragging rights.

We will not have to live under house arrest for 5-6 years. We will all have to adapt to the new world that we live in.

What if we have a vaccine in let’s say 18 months?

I agree with your first paragraph. As for the rest of your predictions, not so much.

At some point society will adapt to this new virus because it will no longer be new. This disease spreads rapidly because of it's newness... it's more deadly than some diseases but less so than others... the world will go back to operating similarly once the virus becomes like all others that exist within our cultures.

As a side note, I read somewhere so I'm not sure if it is true or just someone's opinion, that in Japan it is considered polite to wear a mask in public. Most everyone follows these social norms... except when out to dinner or at a bar or night club... I wonder if it's true... if so it just shows how odd humans can be...

Hope so ^

joedirt wrote:

Influenza has basically already disappeared in most states due to the lockdown:

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm

Right now it is at 2.2%, which is well below normal for this time of year.

Pretty amazing isn't it? What a coincidence.

Now look back to weeks 5,6,7 all time record high flu positives- in 20 years of CDC doing this. Then to Week 14, all time low at 0.8%.

Went from 30.8% all-time high to only 0.8% all time low in a matter of weeks. Sorry, no amount of lockdown or anti-social distancing can account for that drastic of a change in such a short time.

Biggest swindle pulled on the American people since the Gulf of Tonkin.

Who, exactly, is a lockdown propoponent? My 401K has been cratered, I don't like having my children out of school and had enjoyed watching sports on TV, going out to eat and travelling. There is nothing good about a lockdown for me personally. Why would anyone want a lockdown? If someone believes it's the best strategy, it's a sacrifice rather than a benifit.

Humans do not decide here. Sweden and Georgia will learn that lesson.

The virus decides.

Which means it’s up to science. China has 2 vaccines in stage 2/3. USA has 10 in pipeline. We will start manufacturing during summer not knowing if they work. Meaning..

We will have ‘compassionate use’ vaccines in fall. That will take the fear off and we will start back. Spring 2021 for most of USA population to be vaccinated and able to run races.