Population density affects transmissiblity, yes, but the fatality rate is a function of age, underlying health conditions, and available medical resources. New York City is about 2 years younger on average than the nation as a whole, less obese than the national average, and with a high amount of medical resources per capita. Unless you're arguing that the virus will disappear without reaching the infection rates that New York City has reached or will reach (which given your earlier statement of "You’re gonna catch it if you haven’t already" I'm guessing is not what you're arguing), then I don't see how the population density of New York is a meaningful factor.
Pollution would be a significant factor. Mortality rate is affected by the rate of transmission- If we’re basing this on (which we collectively have from the onset) availability of respirators. Coincidentally, now we’re being told respirators are causing more deaths as they allow the body to basically give up.
1.19 is old data isn't it?? Antibody data is backward-looking. Antibodies do not form instantaneously. April test data is a snapshot of March data. The number/rate of infected would be much higher now, which should drive your fatality rate lower.
It's a bit fuzzy in both directions. The antibody testing was done over a two week period at the end of April, and they estimated a ~20% infection rate in New York City at that time. Since it's been 2-4 weeks since that testing was done, yes we would expect the current number of infections to be higher than what was estimated from that test. Meanwhile deaths lag infections by an average of 14 days, so we would expect our current death count to reflect, on average, infections as of two weeks ago. It probably comes out roughly even in the wash, but that's why I usually use the fairly broad range of 0.5%-1.5% as the likely fatality rate. Anything lower or higher than that range strikes me as fairly unlikely.
31% of Nevada's workforce is now collecting unemployment. (That obviously doesn't include workers not eligible.) I'm damn thankful I have a decent paying job to return to.
I’m convinced my mother contracted COVID because the nursing home was bringing in subacute COVID patients. No inheritance for me, her death is costing us money.
Having see firsthand how slow, delayed deaths can cause siblings to go lord of the flies on each other, I'm convinced the worse part of death isn't losing the person -- it's losing your family after the fact. COVID is gonna absolutely destroy some families.
If the family is destroyed by the inheritance, COVID only accelerated the inevitable. The fight over the money was coming anyway.
Why are the shutdowns continuing when there doesn't appear to be a reason to keep them going? Mainly, we don't have someone who is good at logistics in charge...anywhere. We can't get widespread testing almost anywhere but NYC. We can't get widespread antibody tests, that are accurate, anywhere in the country. We have almost zero track and trace programs anywhere in the country. There are maybe 10% of hospitals with a PPE supply which could last more then a week if there is any spike in cases. There are no PPE for everyday citizens who want to protect themselves in public places. There are no universal standards on how to protect workers / customers in public settings. I could keep going on and on, but I think you get the point. Also, as far as mortality rates go, are we only going to focus on the total number or are we going to say, fuck most people over 60 you guys are probably not going to make it past next year? How about the unknown of lasting effects getting, but recovering from COVID? Are we at all prepared to deal with a huge influx of people who have lasting effects from the virus well beyond the shutdown? Do we no longer care that even though people in the 30-50 age range aren't dying at the rates people 60+ are, this doesn't mean if I'm 35 and I get COVID it's a couple days with a headache, some chicken soup, and then I'm good to go. People in this age range are getting admitted to hospitals and staying there for weeks. Hospitals will be overrun with patients taking up beds even if you aren't at a great risk of dying. I'm right there with some of you. My county in NY has seen like 30 cases total and 1 death. This seems like an awful lot of noise for something so small. I also know most of the people in my county travel about 40 minutes to work in the greater Albany area which does not have 30 cases and 1 death. I also know there is a lot of travel between NYC and the Capital region on a daily basis and there are a lot of people who travel up to this part of the state during the summer for vacations. If there happens to be an outbreak in my county from people traveling to Albany or from people out of the area traveling through our county on vacation, it's quite literally game over for a majority of the county. The average age is ~47 and there is one "decent" hospital within a 30 minute drive. With that said, we are one of the first regions opening up according to the guidelines set forth by Cuomo. This includes having hospitals in the region with enough supplies and workers, having a track and trace program set up, etc. Things can be done to open up, but a good majority of leaders aren't actually doing anything to move towards an end goal because, quite honestly, it's difficult and they are way out of their realm.
Here’s an article from a small Boston website, regarding a guy I used to work with at Fenway - not sure if I mentioned in way back in this thread, but his videos about his job were hilarious. https://digboston.com/potylos-videos-about-whole-foods-pandemic-employment-got-him-fired/
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/covid-19-tests-combine-virginia/611620/ Describing some of the fuckery going on with the testing data, emphasizing the importance of the death count. https://www.ajc.com/news/state--reg...uses-critics-cry-foul/182PpUvUX9XEF8vO11NVGO/ Georgia's "oopsie" moment.
As of right now, Coronavirus is on track to be #3 cause of death for Americans this year. https://www.healthline.com/health/leading-causes-of-death#accidents According to https://covidtracking.com/data/us-daily: March 1st deaths: 8 April 1st deaths; 4823 May 1st deaths: 59059 We are currently at 86,000 dead, and most of the experts in the federal government agree the actual death count is likely over 100,000 now. So, in 75 days we have gone from a functionally negligible death counts to 100,000. Cancer kills around 600,000 a year. Heart disease is slightly higher at 635,000. Using those numbers: Heart disease kills about 1700 people a day. Cancer about 1600 Coronavirus has averaged 1333 deaths per day since March 1. Between April 1 and May 1, it's averaged 1800 a day, making it the most fatal thing killing Americans that month. Accidents kill about 465 people a day. When you ask why we're in lockdown, that's why. COVID-19 is more fatal than stupidity. Please think about that. The thing about the people dying of cancer/heart disease/accidents is that kind of death isn't contagious. If you get cancer, you suffer and die, but that's it. You don't expose cancer to your whole family. Also, it takes years for cancer/heart disease to kill you, likely filled with bad decisions that pile up over time. COVID-19 takes weeks or in some cases, days. Not to mention the folks who are permanently disabled or have lasting damage from it. Or the weird and terrifying effect this has on children. Extrapolate that 1333/day number over 365 days: 486,000 dead. That is a staggering number, especially considering that's in light of the lockdown and all the countermeasures we've enacted the past few months. That's the entire city of Atlanta dead in a year. Nothing like that has ever happened to us. Not WW2, not the Civil War, not 9/11, not any hurricane....NOTHING. We have about 330,000,000 people in this country, and if all of them get this virus at a death rate of 1.5% that's just under 5 million dead. What has changed? What counter measures or drugs have you heard of that can keep you from getting this? What is standing in the way of this spreading to all of us? The answer thus far is: not much, if anything. The risk of this spreading to all of us is still present, it's still dangerous, and the downside of it spreading to all of us is still catastrophic beyond words. We seem poised to do less, not more, to stop this from spreading and that implies we are going to incur higher loss. The bargain was: we lockdown as a country, while the government ramps up testing, supply chains, and hospital capacity. Flatten the curve, but raise the line, right? Well, we failed to get widespread testing online, for reasons that are beyond me. Supply chain for most of the needs ticked up, and while there are some gaps, we have a better handle on getting critical supplies. Hospital capacity is a broad concept, we summarize as "beds, staff and stuff". We can't make more staff without sacrificing quality (something we do NOT want to do), so we've made the staff more mobile and developed a "fluid surge" model, where we can move staff into areas of high need quickly. The testing is simply the liability. We are still in the dark about who has this and where. The fact that members of the government think the testing numbers reflect poorly on them, or seek to control them over the advice of the public health experts tells me all I want or need to know about when the testing we need will come online: it won't. Failure number 6584256542 in this response, but the most critical one. But to answer the question of why are we on lockdown for paltry cases and deaths? 1. Those numbers are almost certainly underestimates. It's becoming impossible to know what the actual presence is. The simple question of "how many people have the virus?" is somehow political, which is Goddamned astounding. 2. The risk of getting something almost as fatal as cancer or a heart attack is still present. It's reduced by wearing a mask, gloves, and keeping social distancing, but not eliminated. 3. The people on the downside of that risk are not likely to be customers, they are likely to be employees. I am not risking my staff's safety, and by extension the viability of my operation. It's "as safe as possible, as long as possible" for my team. I hope I'm not alone in this. Also, for most business owners, forcing people to come to work means you can protect them, or are at least taking measures to protect them. If those measures fail, or you didn't do enough, you can be liable for that, and that for many places compounds the risk. If someone gets sick in my place of business, not only do I risk the rest of my employees (and myself, and by extension my family) getting sick with something that's on par with fucking cancer, but I run the risk of getting sued by them, or even worse, if I infect my customers.... 4. We have no better alternative to reduce or slow the spread of this virus. Again, this is plan D, in all it's glory. If you have a better idea, I am all ears, and can have you talking to the White House Security Council within 30 minutes.
What you're seeing is a failure on a massive scale at all levels. Governments were not prepared for this whatsoever, not even with modeling and historical data to play with. So this whole thing is ending up as a grand test and will be studied for decades. Incompetence from the White House down to municipal administrations and the general public. That was supposed to be the bargain. What happened was some state governments were not completely honest with their citizens. Now lock down orders are being extended beyond curve flattening which is angering the public. Combined with politicians' failure at communicating dynamic environmental changes, the whole thing breaks down. This is what you're seeing in places like Michigan. The Governor's messaging was unclear and arrogant. And now a bunch of dumbasses are draping themselves in the flag and breaking quarantine because they think shes being unfair. The problem is they're actually half-right, but so is she. This isn't the only place stuff like that is occurring either. Trial-by-fire with a terrible cost. And unfortunately, I'm willing to bet hostile nations around the world are paying attention to who can and can't respond effectively in the event of biological warfare.
I honestly find it kind of ridiculous how some people think governments should have been totally prepared for this. It's not realistic to have a massive stockpile of supplies on hand reserved for pandemics that happen about once in a century. They should have been more prepared than they were, but some of these expectations are just absurd.
Where’s your line sit for unprepared versus aggressively negligent bordering on downright hostile toward making smart moves to do what’s necessary?
Dude, if I am telling you we should have been prepared....we should have been prepared. Maybe not 500 million masks and 1m ventilators prepared, but considering some of the shit we keep in warehouses around the world "just in case", this is a failure. The preparation goes beyond the materials, though. It's not like we weren't warned, or that this scenario was outrageously unrealistic. I've sat through exercises that were far less likely to happen, that relied on real-world supplies we have sitting around. Have some fun googling "FEMA warehouse Puerto Rico" or "FEMA Warehouse hurricane", or just look at some of the logistics receipts my agency racks up and tell me it's acceptable we didn't have a better handle on this. The expectations were set pretty low in terms of what we needed to have happened. I think it's interesting that in light of incredible failure, you think the expectation was too high.
We have HHS and CDC at the Federal level plus State level equivalents....I'm sure there are others and subset groups under the CDC and HHS umbrella. How many more Government agencies are needed? How many more billions spent annually? How many more millions of N95 masks sitting, expired and moldering in a warehouse? The answer to every problem is always the same.