Coronavirus in Massachusetts (Boston: travel to, trial, youth)

[OutdoorLover]

Originally Posted by NewfieMama

Okay, but as I said earlier:

"In late April, the United Nations World Food Program reported that 250 million people may face starvation as a result of the economic impact of Covid-19"


Which is better?

And I believe the original models had 50K people dying in Sweden? And yet they are at 3,500 with the healtcare system never being overwhelmed, and very close to herd immunity.

I think we need to be careful about assuming that Sweden is out of the woods. Their people also seem to have willingly complied voluntarily with government recommendations on masks and social distancing, from the start, which isn't what happened here (in fact many people in the US have never complied).

Still, I haven't heard the scientists explaining how Sweden, so far, anyway, has come through this without large scale mortality and morbidity. I am a scientist myself, and I am not afraid to say that I don't fully understand it myself. The aforementioned voluntary compliance would certainly be a big help, but I would not expect them to do as well as they have.

[redplum33]

Originally Posted by lrfox

You argued that anyone who believes that there's another approach beside the current lockdown is "delusional" until we have a vaccine (and that the gov't should just "print money" as if inflation isn't a thing that exists). I argued that a vaccine is months away (best case scenario) and we cannot reasonably expect that the majority of the population will continue with the status quo until a vaccine is readily available so a carefully measured approach to gradually reopening the economy and loosing restrictions is the best and most realistic option going forward. Not sure why that's hard to follow?

You said we need herd immunity.

Originally Posted by lrfox

If a vaccine isn't available for a long time (or if it's never available), we need the herd immunity in order to beat this thing. You don't get that from maintaining the shut down forever, and practically speaking, some level of human interaction will always be essential so you can't realistically isolate the virus away. And there's a human element - people will get restless and start going out on their own regardless of the restrictions in place. So it's really more delusional to think that this can continue as-is forever.

Fauci seems pretty confident that there will be a vaccine. Should half a million people die just because you're getting restless?

[Bridge781]

How is China doing ? They seem eerily quiet.

[bjimmy24]

I don't see how anyone can say they have any idea when/if a vaccine would ever be produced.

Personally, not trying to be dramatic, but I'd much rather get sick and die than live life on perpetual, indefinite lockdown. There is more to life than biological functioning.

[Taffee72]

I ran out at lunch to get more wine and chocolate and there were people everywhere! Cars, people in the stores, jogging, etc... Other than seeing masks, you would not know there was anything going on.

[Bridge781]

I feel like I’m ok with how things are at the moment minus having my kids around 24/7. I mean we can still get pretty much whatever food we want, order things we need online. we still have our incomes. I know this probably won’t be sustainable for too much longer...but I have realized I don’t have a need for a lot of things I needed before.

[NewfieMama]

Originally Posted by OutdoorLover

I think we need to be careful about assuming that Sweden is out of the woods. Their people also seem to have willingly complied voluntarily with government recommendations on masks and social distancing, from the start, which isn't what happened here (in fact many people in the US have never complied).

I understand that it is culturally different and they are more trusting of their gov't and willing to comply. But they are obviously the go-to example of a country who has balanced the virus without destroying the economy or their residents' mental health. And even if they aren't out of the woods, we can all agree they are much, much closer to being out of the woods than we are.

[redplum33]

Originally Posted by Bridge781

I feel like I’m ok with how things are at the moment minus having my kids around 24/7. I mean we can still get pretty much whatever food we want, order things we need online. we still have our incomes. I know this probably won’t be sustainable for too much longer...but I have realized I don’t have a need for a lot of things I needed before.

I don't have kids but I feel the same.

[redplum33]

Originally Posted by Bridge781

Ive seen that there are 4 kids at Boston children’s being hospitalized with these covid related illnesses. Concerning but not quite alarming for the moment I guess.

10 now.

[OutdoorLover]

Originally Posted by NewfieMama

I understand that it is culturally different and they are more trusting of their gov't and willing to comply. But they are obviously the go-to example of a country who has balanced the virus without destroying the economy or their residents' mental health. And even if they aren't out of the woods, we can all agree they are much, much closer to being out of the woods than we are.

Sweden has done well. South Korea also has done well, and was one of the earliest hit - had very little warning or time to prepare, and it's a densely populated nation, close to China. They took aggressive, early measures. New Zealand has done extremely well, best of all, and they also took aggressive, early measures.

The US has not done so well. Maybe not the absolute worst in the world (Italy arguably worse), but certainly not the best - outside of the White House, I think few dispute that. We did very little for a couple of months, in complete denial of the situation at the federal level, and then there was an organic movement by the states to try to take some initiative to mitigate the pandemic as it overtook us. Personally I think those two months of denial and standing around, doing very little, really hurt us, put us behind the 8-ball.