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Wear a mask in crowded places, Keep distance as much as possible, and wash your hands frequently.
If that was all we had to do this wouldn't be a big deal.
Instead, we have 14 day quarantines with no test on arrival options, even for residents.
Smoking comes at a high price, the economic cost is $300 Billion annually - so I kinda have an issue with the choices people make. It isn't a free choice.
I'll edit to add this perspective -
Heart Disease kills roughly 647,000 Americans each year - largely attributed to smoking and what we eat - smoking kills 480,000. Both numbers far higher than what Covid will do - but we know this, the economic cost of Covid will be over $4 Trillion just this year and amount that isn't even close for heart disease/smoking
Last edited by whtviper1; 08-04-2020 at 10:21 PM..
If that was all we had to do this wouldn't be a big deal.
Instead, we have 14 day quarantines with no test on arrival options, even for residents.
Smoking comes at a high price, the economic cost is $300 Billion annually - so I kinda have an issue with the choices people make. It isn't a free choice.
That is a fair point.
I do think there have been some over-reactions. But, we are dealing with a novel virus, and there is no playbook to follow. So, i don't really blame some government officials over-reacting, especially early on. And, certainly the 24hr news cycle that always needs a scary headline to sell adds is not helping that at all.
But, I think much more harm has been done by the anti-science stance of some of our leaders at a national level. Other countries have shown us a reasonable path to start opening the economy, but half the population here in the US has been convinced that things like wearing a mask in crowded places is somehow showing weakness.
There really should have been a coordinated national effort. The country shut down our economy, and we have precious little to show for it. Where was the Manhattan project like effort to develop rapid testing and contact tracing on a nationwide basis. Other countries with less resources pulled this off, while we wallowed in partisan bickering.
Unfortunately, i don't see things improving for some time. Even when a vaccine is available. How big will the anti-vax crowd be in this climate. I hope i am wrong.
Instead, we have 14 day quarantines with no test on arrival options, even for residents...
That is ridiculous. I would be tempted to go straight from airport to get tested somewhere, but then someone would probably turn you in.
Alaska has changed policy once again. Visitors can come into state without testing in advance, but must pay $250 for testing at airport.
JUNEAU, Alaska (KTUU) - Alaska was poised to block visitors from coming into the state without a negative COVID test, now the state is changing course. Starting on Aug. 11, nonresidents will still be able to come to Alaska and get tested locally, but it will now cost them $250 per test.
Commissioner Adam Crum of the Department of Health and Social Services made the announcement at a press conference with the governor on Tuesday evening. Nonresidents will have to pay for tests in Alaska unless they got a test within 72 hours of arriving.
Visitors to Alaska would need to pay for COVID tests and quarantine will waiting for their results. Crum said that Alaskans could still get a COVID test for free.
Children under the age of 10 will not be required to have a negative COVID test coming to Alaska..."
I'm simply saying that constant comparisons to other virus' or car accidents or a flu pandemic from 50 years ago are meaningless to most people. They are an attempt to minimize the significance of the issue that is in hand today and at this moment. And what is happening right now is what is important to people. People can talk about the Flu and car accidents all they want, but peoples fear is real and that is what drives their behavior today. It could also be said that if there was not such strong actions taken early (the lockdowns), the death & disability toll would be much higher than it is.
My mention of Cody is not cherry picking. I'm making the point that it is easy to minimize the virus if YOU are not the person impacted by it. Cody's situation is not unique. It's just that the only thing publicized with the virus are the deaths. But there are many, many more people who survive (like Cody) but have serious problems. I personally know a man in his 50's who contracted the virus. He did not die. But it has impacted his blood, caused clotting and he suffered a massive stroke while hospitalized with Covid. He'll never be able to return to work again and his wife is left now trying to figure out how to care for him the rest of his life.
Anyway, I certainly agree that a lot of the problems with this virus in our country could have been handled much better simply with consistent messaging. And I also believe if everyone would do 3 simply things more areas could open more of their economies and still keep the virus under control: Wear a mask, maintain social distancing and wash your hands often.
I will agree with your first statement, as I've already said people are reacting emotionally and not rationally. They fear some unseen disease that is accompanied by dire warnings daily, whether justified or not.
Cody is cherry picking a bad case, on the flip side, it would be like someone picking a case where the person had no idea they even had the virus. Again, you can say the same thing about ANYTHING that causes death or disability. It tends not to impact people as greatly if it doesn't impact you directly. There's nothing wrong with that, it's common sense. If you consider 10X the number of cases are asymptomatic and undetected, on average, covid is nothing more than a cold to most people. Yes some people are affected more than others, which is unfortunate, but again, is the case with other diseases.
I will agree that the messaging on both the national and local stage has been horrendous. One example is the bar ban. There's 5 cases out of 2000+ associated with bars. The state noted the below ongoing clusters. Yet bars are banned, and these other activities are allowed to go on. Then you have leaders grandstanding and giving inconsistent messages. Its this kind of stuff that causes people to lose respect for the government and ignore their guidance. Like I mentioned, it's unfortunate that Hawaii's leadership is so weak, as it's causing this situation to be worse, in terms of both cases and economic destruction.
>> 71 cases linked to a series of funeral events;
>> Six cases linked to a hot yoga class;
>> 12 cases associated with a birthday party;
The 1968 pandemic killed over 100,000 Americans with 1/3 less population. It barely made the news.
LOL. You can't compare anything that happened in 1968 to today. What was an acceptable and tolerable number of deaths in 1968 would be an absolute travesty today. For example, in 1968 there were 27.8 vehicular related deaths per 100,000 people. Today it's 9 deaths.
And 99% of what makes the "news" today wouldn't have made the news in 1968. There are things today that didn't exist in 1968 like cable news, the internet and social media. There is no comparison.
LOL. You can't compare anything that happened in 1968 to today. What was an acceptable and tolerable number of deaths in 1968 would be an absolute travesty today. For example, in 1968 there were 27.8 vehicular related deaths per 100,000 people. Today it's 9 deaths.
And 99% of what makes the "news" today wouldn't have made the news in 1968. There are things today that didn't exist in 1968 like cable news, the internet and social media. There is no comparison.
For this particular issue, I find the comparison to be appropriate. There wasn't cable news, but there was a robust print media and local news/radio. In short, the country certainly had the means to disseminate information easily in 1968. Thus, that there was no outcry then while some people seem to be losing their minds today at the very least makes me question the motivations about some of the coverage we are seeing today.
If I thought that much of the media hysteria we were seeing was honest, I'd agree with you. But when media and some of government go out of their way to condemn small and short in duration anti lockdown protesters as endangering national health and not caring if grandma or grandpa dies, while remaining silent and aggressively trying to fight back against the notion that the weeks' long BLM protests (I dont care about what position people have on the movement for this particular topic) that involved many hundreds of thousands of people shouting at the top of their lungs didn't play any role in the spike we are seeing, we have a problem. When cities like NYC wouldn't even allow people to be asked if they had attended a protest when conducting contract tracing during the BLM protests and when Dr. Fauci recently refused to directly answer whether protests could have led to some of the increase we are seeing (he did so in a roundabout way, but it was painful to watch from the usually straight shooting doctor), we have a problem.
Well, one thing seems pretty obvious to me: Covid cases on Oahu have increased significantly as the lockdown has slowly been loosened and the economy slowly opened... even with the quarantine still in place.
Lift the quarantine and further open the economy and you are very likely to see an exponential explosion of cases (even with testing on arrival). It only takes one infected person to move the infection into the local community for deeper spread. The Hawaiian Airlines Flight attendant spread shows that pretty clearly as it spread among the attendants and then to the community through the gym.
If you can’t demonstrate an ability to slow the spread with a quarantine still in place it will only get worse with further loosening of restrictions. 100% compliance with masks & social distancing would help but that’s not even happening now. It’s tough to host tourists and still have social distancing.
I guess the question is, how much spread and infection within the community are you willing to accept as a trade off for further opening the economy ? How many deaths are a fair trade off and are you willing to accept ?
Cases are already exploding in the past 2 weeks even with a quarantine.
According to noontime news today, Oahu is receiving around 3,000 arrivals a day and close to 1,000 of them are "visitors". Not surprising that our Covid-19 case count is rising.
It has also been reported that if they buy separate tickets to neighbor islands they can avoid the quarantine, being counted as interisland visitors instead.
We are definitely seeing more tourists on Maui and rental cars are everywhere.
According to noontime news today, Oahu is receiving around 3,000 arrivals a day and close to 1,000 of them are "visitors". Not surprising that our Covid-19 case count is rising.
It has also been reported that if they buy separate tickets to neighbor islands they can avoid the quarantine, being counted as interisland visitors instead.
We are definitely seeing more tourists on Maui and rental cars are everywhere.
Pretty sure that's wrong because everyone deplaning in Honolulu must sign paperwork and have their phone checked and recorded as a contact. Quarantined visitors are not allowed to rent cars.
I did this in May and was most definitely being kept track of on Big Island.
Much more likely that local population is spreading the virus rather than visitors, IMO. That's what we've seen in Alaska.
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