COVID Congratulations!

 

Congratulations should be in order. The public health leadership asked us to give them time, to change our lifestyles to slow the progression of the disease.  At great personal and social cost, we successfully flattened the curve. We bought time for the medical and research professionals to catch up. Outside of the New York City DeBlasio Debacle, we did what everyone was asking of us, and the results are showing it. This should be a time to start relaxing the lockdown, as it has succeeded outside of NYC. Tim Carney speaks for me here.

What’s utterly infuriated to me is that a lot of people are trying to claim this is a failure.

Do they want to ensure that no public health official is ever taken seriously again? This is a disgrace to my profession (yeah, I have a Master’s in Public Health and took courses in epidemiology).  If you place political correctness or political ambitions over your mission, you need to be fired. If you put your desire to get some over your mission, like the British epidemiologist who developed the transmission model before getting caught breaking the lockdown with his pants down, well, I hope he got a sexually transmitted disease in the process.

Outside of the professional realm, the media and politicians have continued to exceed my worst expectations. They seem unable to use any type of persuasion outside of hectoring people, and insulting them when they don’t immediately comply. This lockdown cannot last forever — we need a point where we can declare victory and scale down. Friday is V-E Day. While we still have troops in Germany today, they are not on a war footing, actively in combat. It’s time to have V-WC Day.

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  1. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    OmegaPaladin: It’s time to have V-WC Day.

    WC? Sort of a different sort of victory at Water loo?

    • #1
  2. DonG (skeptic) Coolidge
    DonG (skeptic)
    @DonG

    OmegaPaladin:

    What’s utterly infuriated to me is that a lot of people are trying to claim this is a failure.

    Do they want to ensure that no public health official is ever taken seriously again?

    The public health people are being led by Fauci and the MSM.  Fauci is a grant grifter and the MSM is focused on youths on beaches while ignoring the body count in nursing homes.  They need to assert themselves.

    The CDC/NIH is unable to gather and share data, do testing, produce models, evaluate treatments, or explain prudent behavior changes.   The country doesn’t know much more than we did when people in a Kirkland nursing home were dying from a respiratory disease.

    Respect/trust has to be earned.

    • #2
  3. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    OmegaPaladin:

    Congratulations should be in order. The public health leadership asked us to give them time, to change our lifestyles to slow the progression of the disease. At great personal and social cost, we successfully flattened the curve. We bought time for the medical and research professionals to catch up. Outside of the New York City DeBlasio Debacle, we did what everyone was asking of us, and the results are showing it. This should be a time to start relaxing the lockdown, as it has succeeded outside of NYC.

    Tim Carney speaks for me here

    What’s utterly infuriated to me is that a lot of people are trying to claim this is a failure.

    Do they want to ensure that no public health official is ever taken seriously again? This is a disgrace to my profession (yeah, I have a Master’s in Public Health and took courses in epidemiology). If you place political correctness or political ambitions over your mission, you need to be fired. If you put your desire to get some over your mission, like the British epidemiologist who developed the transmission model before getting caught breaking the lockdown with his pants down, well, I hope he got a sexually transmitted disease in the process.

    Outside of the professional realm, the media and politicians have continued to exceed my worst expectations. They seem unable to use any type of persuasion outside of hectoring people, and insulting them when they don’t immediately comply. This lockdown cannot last forever – we need a point where we can declare victory and scale down. We are right around V-E day. While we still have troops in Germany today, they are not on a war footing, actively in combat. It’s time to have V-WC Day.

    I agree completely with this. Let’s say thank you to the amazing doctors and nurses in our nation’s hospitals and now take the cast off our leg and try to stand on it. It holds us up! Yay! We’re a little wobbly, but we can make it out to the car. From here on, we’ll be getting stronger and stronger. :-)

    • #3
  4. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    OmegaPaladin: Outside of the professional realm, the media and politicians have continued to exceed my worst expectations. They seem unable to use any type of persuasion outside of hectoring people, and insulting them when they don’t immediately comply. This lockdown cannot last forever – we need a point where we can declare victory and scale down.

    You do have the divide here between people who are legitmately still fearful of going out and coming in contact with COVID, whether or not they’re personally in a high-risk category, and the “Never let a crisis go to waste” types, who want to maintain the lockdowns in order to maintain the ability to weaponize COVID as a campaign issue through the summer and into the fall. Their fear really isn’t the virus as much as it is the election results in November might not go their way.

    The problem for them, though, is both federalism and the fact that the outbreak is worldwide, and other nations do not have the same political concerns. So they can freak out about a bump up in positive tests in a state that’s reopening in order to try to stop those reopenings in their tracks (never mind, as Nate Silver pointed out on Wednesday, that, a large part of the bump in positive case came prior to any restrictions being loosened and were due to the availability of coronavirus testing going up), but they’re also going to have to ignore European nations or those surrouding China in east Asia also reopening during the upcoming late spring and summer months.

    The hyperbole and fear peddling with continue all the way to Nov. 3. But those crying about an explosion of cases and dead people are going to have to start showing the public dead people outside of the NYC area, or people are going to slowly start demanding to return things to normal in both Red and Blue states.

    • #4
  5. Buckpasser Member
    Buckpasser
    @Buckpasser

    OmegaPaladin: Outside of the New York City DeBlasio Debacle, we did what everyone was asking of us, and the results are showing it. This should be a time to start relaxing the lockdown, as it has succeeded outside of NYC.

     

    I have said before that had this virus erupted in somewhere like Hays, KS instead of New York City the reaction would be the complete opposite.  I have no doubt that NYC would have locked down in reaction.  The rest of the country is not New York City.

    • #5
  6. OmegaPaladin Moderator
    OmegaPaladin
    @OmegaPaladin

    MarciN (View Comment):

    OmegaPaladin:

    Congratulations should be in order. The public health leadership asked us to give them time, to change our lifestyles to slow the progression of the disease. At great personal and social cost, we successfully flattened the curve. We bought time for the medical and research professionals to catch up. Outside of the New York City DeBlasio Debacle, we did what everyone was asking of us, and the results are showing it. This should be a time to start relaxing the lockdown, as it has succeeded outside of NYC.

    Tim Carney speaks for me here

    What’s utterly infuriated to me is that a lot of people are trying to claim this is a failure.

    Do they want to ensure that no public health official is ever taken seriously again? This is a disgrace to my profession (yeah, I have a Master’s in Public Health and took courses in epidemiology). If you place political correctness or political ambitions over your mission, you need to be fired. If you put your desire to get some over your mission, like the British epidemiologist who developed the transmission model before getting caught breaking the lockdown with his pants down, well, I hope he got a sexually transmitted disease in the process.

    Outside of the professional realm, the media and politicians have continued to exceed my worst expectations. They seem unable to use any type of persuasion outside of hectoring people, and insulting them when they don’t immediately comply. This lockdown cannot last forever – we need a point where we can declare victory and scale down. We are right around V-E day. While we still have troops in Germany today, they are not on a war footing, actively in combat. It’s time to have V-WC Day.

    I agree completely with this. Let’s say thank you to the amazing doctors and nurses in our nation’s hospitals and now take the cast off our leg and try to to stand on it. It holds us up! Yay! We’re a little wobbly, but we can make it out to the car. From here on, we’ll be getting stronger and stronger. :-)

    That’s a great way of putting it.  The Miraculous Ladybug strikes again!

    • #6
  7. DonG (skeptic) Coolidge
    DonG (skeptic)
    @DonG

    OmegaPaladin: Tim Carney speaks for me here

    The linked article seems to assume that the US has a perfectly mixed population (very IHME).  However, people do not teleport to random geographic locations every few hours.  People live where they live and few people do some traveling.   The whole country needs go through this.  It is going to spread until it saturates and “saturates” means something different for different locales.

    • #7
  8. CarolJoy, Above Top Secret Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret
    @CarolJoy

    DonG (skeptic) (View Comment):

    OmegaPaladin:

    What’s utterly infuriated to me is that a lot of people are trying to claim this is a failure.

    Do they want to ensure that no public health official is ever taken seriously again?

    The public health people are being led by Fauci and the MSM. Fauci is a grant grifter and the MSM is focused on youths on beaches while ignoring the body count in nursing homes. They need to assert themselves.

    The CDC/NIH is unable to gather and share data, do testing, produce models, evaluate treatments, or explain prudent behavior changes. The country doesn’t know much more than we did when people in a Kirkland nursing home were dying from a respiratory disease.

    Respect/trust has to be earned.

    And let’s face it: if the people in charge of this current crisis, from Fauci to governors to petty bureaucrats like so many Calif county public health officers   had any counterparts involved in  the way we waged war against the Third Reich over in Europe, we’d still be there!

    • #8
  9. Full Size Tabby Member
    Full Size Tabby
    @FullSizeTabby

    I have for years not trusted pronouncements from “health experts” because of their frequent and repeated reversals on human diet recommendations. 

    The professional group new to my distrust is the predictive modelers. 

    • #9
  10. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Full Size Tabby (View Comment):

    I have for years not trusted pronouncements from “health experts” because of their frequent and repeated reversals on human diet recommendations.

    The professional group new to my distrust is the predictive modelers.

    Don’t eat it; don’t drink it.
    You should eat it; you should drink it.

    Second verse; same as the first.

    • #10
  11. Sisyphus (Rolling Stone) Member
    Sisyphus (Rolling Stone)
    @Sisyphus

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Full Size Tabby (View Comment):

    I have for years not trusted pronouncements from “health experts” because of their frequent and repeated reversals on human diet recommendations.

    The professional group new to my distrust is the predictive modelers.

    Don’t eat it; don’t drink it.
    You should eat it; you should drink it.

    Second verse; same as the first.

    But it only becomes a problem if you pay attention to them.

    • #11
  12. She Member
    She
    @She

    Fine post.

    I would like to see us get back to something approaching “normal” as quickly as possible. (Full disclosure: I’m retired, live in the country, in an area which hasn’t been hard hit (to now), and my daily life hasn’t changed that much.  Tendentious as the governor of PA has been, at least he hasn’t gone Full Whitmer, and I’ve been able to go to garden centers and get my supplies.  I do miss socializing and my thrice-weekly swim though.

    Then I would like to see (although I’m not optimistic) a serious effort made to identify strategies for protecting vulnerable populations in future pandemics.  Right now, it’s the elderly.  It could just as easily have been infants.  Or specific ethnicities or races.  Or other demographics.

    But right now it’s the elderly.  And there’s some discussion starting to emerge here and elsewhere about what’s been concerning me for a while.  “Isolate the elderly and let the rest of us get on with it,” isn’t workable.  “Protect the elderly and let the rest of us get on with it” sounds better, but what does it mean?  And how can the elderly be protected?

    While many of the elderly are capable of living their lives under quarantine and are well enough physically and acute enough mentally to take care of themselves if we “isolate them” what needs to happen to get food and other supplies to them so they can live reasonable lives while “isolated?”  Certainly, family support is crucial here, but what if there is little to none? (Wouldn’t it be ironic if one of the outcomes of the coronavirus epidemic were to be a renewed commitment, on the part of those whose social policies have disrespected and largely wrecked “the family,” to building the family back up again so that people within it took care of each other from cradle to grave?)

    As you go down (up) the scale of elderly (and vulnerable person) dependency to shut-ins still living at home but almost totally reliant on outside carers, or even live-in carers, most of whom rotate shifts and duties among their patients, or those who require frequent hospital or doctor visits to remain healthy or even upright, how is all that going to be handled?

    And folks in facilities (independent, assisted, nursing homes, etc) which can easily be “locked” down, but at which, as has been shown, the virus cannot easily be contained (again, so much “essential” traffic in and out, and round and round)–how do we “protect” or “isolate” them effectively?

    Saw an article in this morning’s Telegraph, that “care home staff may be banned from working in multiple locations amid fears of coronavirus leaks.” No idea how that would work job-wise, or logistically, or if it’s a good answer.  But at least people are starting to recognize the real problem, and ask some of the right questions.

    • #12
  13. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    It’s no surprise the MSM is portraying the “Reopen Now!” crowd as MAGA-hat-wearing white supremacists and the “Stay Locked Down” crowd as the leftist voices of reason.  You have a couple of cases where governors with nearly identical restrictions being lifted in the nearly the same way, but the Republican is wantonly killing his citizens while the Democrat is judicious in his handling of the reopening . . .

    • #13
  14. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    Stad (View Comment):

    It’s no surprise the MSM is portraying the “Reopen Now!” crowd as MAGA-hat-wearing white supremacists and the “Stay Locked Down” crowd as the leftist voices of reason. You have a couple of cases where governors with nearly identical restrictions being lifted in the nearly the same way, but the Republican is wantonly killing his citizens while the Democrat is judicious in his handling of the reopening . . .

    The situation in Colorado is an interesting contrast-and-compare, in that Gov. Polis has joined the coalition of West Coast Democratic governors on shutdown restrictions, but his actions are closer to those of Gov. Abbott down in Texas, because he knows the state voters aren’t as deep Blue as the ones actually on the West Coast. But media-wise, he still gets treated like the West Coast governors because he has a ‘D’ next to his name, while the same media people started hyping upticks in COVID-positive test results in Texas even before the restrictions were lifted on May 1 (in part because the state had begun offering free COVID testing on April 20 through the use of National Guard troops and emergency testing stations).

    So the default media position is don’t ease anything at all, at least through Nov. 3. But if you do ease, you need to have a ‘D’ next to your name, or your motives will be questioned.

    • #14
  15. Nancy Spalding Inactive
    Nancy Spalding
    @NancySpalding

    Full Size Tabby

    I have for years not trusted pronouncements from “health experts” because of their frequent and repeated reversals on human diet recommendations.

    The professional group new to my distrust is the predictive modelers.

    having done some modeling myself, I have always distrusted predictive modelers… it is worse than “garbage in-garbage out” because changing one parameter the smallest bit is very easy, but the outcomes may be hugely different… (sorry, don’t know how to use the quote function)

    • #15
  16. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Nancy Spalding (View Comment):
    having done some modeling myself, I have always distrusted predictive modelers… it is worse than “garbage in-garbage out” because changing one parameter the smallest bit is very easy, but the outcomes may be hugely different… (sorry, don’t know how to use the quote function)

    As I’ve said in other post comments, My Master’s thesis was a computer model.  If you tailor the input just right, you can get the desired output (which in my case was a Master’s degree) . . .

    • #16
  17. Roderic Coolidge
    Roderic
    @rhfabian

    OmegaPaladin: What’s utterly infuriated to me is that a lot of people are trying to claim this is a failure.

    What officials were saying early on is that flattening the curve was about all we could expect; completely ridding ourselves of the virus was unrealistic, and that has turned out to be true. 

    To flatten the cure was the goal.  Some thought that this implied that the same number of deaths was to be expected regardless of how flat the curve got, but this wasn’t true.  The original projections published in the middle of March indicated that fewer lives by a couple of orders of magnitude would be lost if the curve was flattened.  This has worked so well that actually saving lives beyond what was expected seems possible, and some governors are going for it.  

    Fine.  If the governors in the blue states kill their economies that will leave all the more for Texas, Georgia, etc.  It’s not like we  don’t routinely tolerate loss of life in order to make things run smoothly.  Traffic fatalities come to mind.  Once we get through this I’ll expect legislation in the blue states reducing the speed limit to 5 mph, because no sacrifice is too great if it saves one life.

     

     

    • #17
  18. Roderic Coolidge
    Roderic
    @rhfabian

    DonG (skeptic) (View Comment):
    DonG (skeptic)

    OmegaPaladin: Tim Carney speaks for me here

    The linked article seems to assume that the US has a perfectly mixed population (very IHME). However, people do not teleport to random geographic locations every few hours. People live where they live and few people do some traveling. The whole country needs go through this. It is going to spread until it saturates and “saturates” means something different for different locales.

    I hope by this you don’t mean herd immunity, because we are a looooooong way from that.

    • #18
  19. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Roderic (View Comment):
    Once we get through this I’ll expect legislation in the blue states reducing the speed limit to 5 mph

    Except for government officials and the liberals who back them.

    • #19
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