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We can't "beat this." We can slow it. This is a letter from a long list of prominent Canadian health officials saying things need to be opened up, but responsibly.
Open Letter - A Balanced Response
"The undersigned represent current and past leaders in public health, health care systems and academia. We are writing to you to with our thoughts regarding a balanced approach to dealing with COVID-19 We strongly believe that population health and equity are important considerations that must be applied to future decisions regarding pandemic management.
The current approach to dealing with COVID-19 carries significant risks to overall population health and threatens to increase inequities across the country. Aiming to prevent or contain every case of COVID-19 is simply no longer sustainable at this stage in the pandemic. <bold- mine> We need to accept that COVID-19 will be with us for some time and to find ways to deal with it....
We cannot sustain universal control measures indefinitely.
We need to accept that there will be cases and outbreaks of COVID-19. We need localized control measures that are risk-based. We should consistently reassess quarantine and isolation periods, recommendations for physical distancing and non-medical masks, and travel restrictions based on current best evidence and levels of risk...."
We could have beaten it had our feckless national leaders done what needed to be done in February and March when the virus was wrecking shop in Italy and China and implemented a national contact tracing and quarantine program when we had very few cases. South Korea was doing it then and we should have followed their example instead of dilly-dallying. But, frankly, national leaders didn't show enough leadership to actually do it, and its primarily because of politics. Early in the pandemic that type of response would have been far more effective - now its impossible. And lets not even get started on the federal government's unbalanced fiscal response, focusing far more on protecting shareholder value than actually supporting people and jobs - had they just backstopped paychecks up to a certain level (say 90% of gross pay up to $100K or something) there would have been less job loss, less fraud than we've seen with the PPP, and lower administrative costs. It also would have had another ancillary benefit of stemming actual job loss and allowing states to focus on their individual virus responses and buy us time. I suspect it would have been cheaper overall as well, though its really hard to say. But we've already spent $3 trillion+ since March, for a bit of perspective, and have gotten very little for it.
Even without a good Federal response, we still could have been in a much better place today if our state leaders had reopened in a more measured way and if we had a mask mandate way earlier, with politicians on both sides of the fence supporting it. Again, politics and cowardice.
Experts lying early about masks to try to save them for healthcare workers was a bad decision for a good reason. I get it, but they contributed to this mess as well by making it difficult for a lot of the population to trust what they are saying, and has contributed to why a lot of people don't want to wear masks now - they don't believe they do any good because at some point the experts were saying don't use them.
So while I agree that we now are to the point where we kind of have to just deal with the death and misery this virus is giving to us as best we can, it never had to be this way. We've reached this point purely due to the inaction of national and state leaders that have made it more difficult to deal with any continued lockdowns. Just terrible decision making at every level and an example of how dysfunctional the national government and many state governments really are.
We could have beaten it had our feckless national leaders done what needed to be done in February and March when the virus was wrecking shop in Italy and China and implemented a national contact tracing and quarantine program when we had very few cases. South Korea was doing it then and we should have followed their example instead of dilly-dallying. But, frankly, national leaders didn't show enough leadership to actually do it, and its primarily because of politics. Early in the pandemic that type of response would have been far more effective - now its impossible. And lets not even get started on the federal government's unbalanced fiscal response, focusing far more on protecting shareholder value than actually supporting people and jobs - had they just backstopped paychecks up to a certain level (say 90% of gross pay up to $100K or something) there would have been less job loss, less fraud than we've seen with the PPP, and lower administrative costs. It also would have had another ancillary benefit of stemming actual job loss and allowing states to focus on their individual virus responses and buy us time. I suspect it would have been cheaper overall as well, though its really hard to say. But we've already spent $3 trillion+ since March, for a bit of perspective, and have gotten very little for it.
Even without a good Federal response, we still could have been in a much better place today if our state leaders had reopened in a more measured way and if we had a mask mandate way earlier, with politicians on both sides of the fence supporting it. Again, politics and cowardice.
Experts lying early about masks to try to save them for healthcare workers was a bad decision for a good reason. I get it, but they contributed to this mess as well by making it difficult for a lot of the population to trust what they are saying, and has contributed to why a lot of people don't want to wear masks now - they don't believe they do any good because at some point the experts were saying don't use them.
So while I agree that we now are to the point where we kind of have to just deal with the death and misery this virus is giving to us as best we can, it never had to be this way. We've reached this point purely due to the inaction of national and state leaders that have made it more difficult to deal with any continued lockdowns. Just terrible decision making at every level and an example of how dysfunctional the national government and many state governments really are.
We are very disjointed as a nation, I said it before, you need national UNITY to overcome adversity and we have failed miserably.
'All the Hospitals Are Full’: In Houston, Overwhelmed ICU's Leave COVID-19 Patients Waiting in ER's.
The increase in ambulance diversions, coupled with the spike in patients being held indefinitely in emergency rooms, are the latest indicators that Houston hospitals are straining to keep up with a surge of new coronavirus patients. https://www.propublica.org/article/a...-in-ers#977365
'All the Hospitals Are Full’: In Houston, Overwhelmed ICU's Leave COVID-19 Patients Waiting in ER's.
The increase in ambulance diversions, coupled with the spike in patients being held indefinitely in emergency rooms, are the latest indicators that Houston hospitals are straining to keep up with a surge of new coronavirus patients. https://www.propublica.org/article/a...-in-ers#977365
This is what happens when you don’t flatten the curve. Sadly, it was entirely preventable, had Abbott chosen science over politics. Now, he’s left scrambling and panicked in his tv appeals, while hospitals across the state are now bursting at the seams. And the peak is yet to come.
My wife works as a Head Nurse and she's been going hard non-stop since the pandemic. In her words, "If I didn't go hard in the gym and keep my energy up, there's no way I could handle the non-stop 10-12 hour shifts since this pandemic began." Everybody dropped the ball on this one, but most of the fault lies on the federal government because Obama already had a pandemic plan in place, and if Trump would've followed it, we wouldn't be in this mess.
We could have beaten it had our feckless national leaders done what needed to be done in February and March when the virus was wrecking shop in Italy and China and implemented a national contact tracing and quarantine program when we had very few cases. South Korea was doing it then and we should have followed their example instead of dilly-dallying. But, frankly, national leaders didn't show enough leadership to actually do it, and its primarily because of politics. Early in the pandemic that type of response would have been far more effective - now its impossible. And lets not even get started on the federal government's unbalanced fiscal response, focusing far more on protecting shareholder value than actually supporting people and jobs - had they just backstopped paychecks up to a certain level (say 90% of gross pay up to $100K or something) there would have been less job loss, less fraud than we've seen with the PPP, and lower administrative costs. It also would have had another ancillary benefit of stemming actual job loss and allowing states to focus on their individual virus responses and buy us time. I suspect it would have been cheaper overall as well, though its really hard to say. But we've already spent $3 trillion+ since March, for a bit of perspective, and have gotten very little for it.
Even without a good Federal response, we still could have been in a much better place today if our state leaders had reopened in a more measured way and if we had a mask mandate way earlier, with politicians on both sides of the fence supporting it. Again, politics and cowardice.
Experts lying early about masks to try to save them for healthcare workers was a bad decision for a good reason. I get it, but they contributed to this mess as well by making it difficult for a lot of the population to trust what they are saying, and has contributed to why a lot of people don't want to wear masks now - they don't believe they do any good because at some point the experts were saying don't use them.
So while I agree that we now are to the point where we kind of have to just deal with the death and misery this virus is giving to us as best we can, it never had to be this way. We've reached this point purely due to the inaction of national and state leaders that have made it more difficult to deal with any continued lockdowns. Just terrible decision making at every level and an example of how dysfunctional the national government and many state governments really are.
We aren't South Korea or Japan. Japan is an island. South Korea is a peninsula bordered by the most closed society on the planet.
They have cameras everywhere. They are homogenous, compliant cultures with limited outsiders. They are small areas. Almost all western nations have had really big issues.
Germany is the only western nation really to have done significantly better. And I have never read anywhere what they did different than France or Italy or Belgium, their neighbors who have done far worse than the US. And to date, Texas and about 1/3 of the states have done better than Germany.
What we do know is that New York did what everyone else should not do. They put Covid patients back in nursing homes. They encouraged subway use even after the virus took off. They for a long time continually pretended like it doesn't exist, like those who think protests of thousands of people elbow to elbow or political rallies in an arena are a good idea. Our death rate outside of NY/NJ/CT is 265 per million while its 413 per million with them.
We aren't South Korea or Japan. Japan is an island. South Korea is a peninsula bordered by the most closed society on the planet.
They have cameras everywhere. They are homogenous, compliant cultures with limited outsiders. They are small areas. Almost all western nations have had really big issues.
Germany is the only western nation really to have done significantly better. And I have never read anywhere what they did different than France or Italy or Belgium, their neighbors who have done far worse than the US. And to date, Texas and about 1/3 of the states have done better than Germany.
What we do know is that New York did what everyone else should not do. They put Covid patients back in nursing homes. They encouraged subway use even after the virus took off. They for a long time continually pretended like it doesn't exist, like those who think protests of thousands of people elbow to elbow or political rallies in an arena are a good idea. Our death rate outside of NY/NJ/CT is 265 per million while its 413 per million with them.
I think there is blame to go around for New York's handling of the virus in the early days, including how Trump handled it but also for Cuomo and DeBlasio. Every western nation with significant oubreaks (Italy, etc...) has drastically reduced the outbreaks by now. We are alone in our stupid attitudes about it. There is no real metric by which our nation has done better than Germany.
Japan, Taiwan, France, Iceland, Spain all now have promising treatments (but only if applied early, not late like our CDC tests require). Terrific reduction in death rates and sick days.
At some point, some months from now, we will all be lots smarter. Those with a spin mission will be drowned out.
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