Fear and Loathing, a Rat Flu Odyssey

[XXX-er]

Good artical by a respected journalist on how it came to BC and how they can tell,

I wouldn't be suprised to see the border stay closed, so far we gots really low numbers and we are very glad to have Dr Henry up here

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/col...box=1591392500

[riser4]

Good artical by a respected journalist on how it came to BC and how they can tell,

I wouldn't be suprised to see the border stay closed, so far we gots really low numbers and we are very glad to have Dr Henry up here

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/col...box=1591392500

Definitely interested in the border situation. My daughter needs to go back to UNB Fredericton in the fall. She's got one year left for undergrad. She's a Can cit and so is my wife. However there's the 14 day thing and also non-essential travel. And is inter-provincial travel still locked down? Of course nobody knows if schools will open.

[XXX-er]

well BC got really lucky but I'm not so sure about the other provinces, I heard Ontario & Quebec are getting hit very hard, I think inter provincial travel is a problem but who can say by the fall ?

Apparently Washington is raging pretty hard so I can't see that border opening when you got 245 new cases in Washington compared to 5 in BC

I'm hearing on-line uni and so some kids are taking the year off instead unless they don't mind doing on-line


of course some people will think lock down was a waste of time & money cuz not so much happened but I think we were just very lucky

[simple]

Funny to watch the Karens flip

[Lone Star]

Funny to watch the Karens flip

Totally expected but still hilarious. Unfortunately the other side of the coin is probably giving the 4chan dweebs some laughs right now, too.

Edit: felt inspired to get out the mspaint

[XXX-er]

Definitely interested in the border situation. My daughter needs to go back to UNB Fredericton in the fall. She's got one year left for undergrad. She's a Can cit and so is my wife. However there's the 14 day thing and also non-essential travel. And is inter-provincial travel still locked down? Of course nobody knows if schools will open.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/n-b...enge-1.5600235


sorry its ^^ just the CBC and this is just Canada

[Core Shot]

Been talking with other parents about back to school rules. It’s mentally disfunctional for the kids. Masks all day, no recess, stay in same classroom all day, lunch at desk, 6 foot distance, no sports etc.

But I hadn’t thought about a teacher shortage.
7% leaving. And 24% thinking about it
=========

More than 15,000 Michigan educators were surveyed May 14 to 22 by the teachers' union on COVID-19-related impacts on public education, including health risks, reopening plans and testing.

Of the teachers and support staff surveyed, 2% said they are leaving the profession, 12% said they are considering leaving, 5% said they are retiring sooner than planned, 12% said they are considering retiring sooner than planned and 1% are retiring as planned this year.

[jono]

Been talking with other parents about back to school rules. It’s mentally disfunctional for the kids. Masks all day, no recess, stay in same classroom all day, lunch at desk, 6 foot distance, no sports etc.

But I hadn’t thought about a teacher shortage.
7% leaving. And 24% thinking about it

Strong point: those measures are not enough to prevent a teacher shortage because they seem pretty inadequate and a chunk of teachers aren't willing to take that risk themselves and/or be a part of the ensuing fiasco. I wonder what those numbers go to if you took no steps at all? Or, say, if you added a testing regime that reduced the chances of an infected kid entering the classroom by 90%? Or 98%? (And, to address your more pressing concerns, made it so kids with antibodies could be designated pitchers/catchers.)

Teachers as a group are pretty dedicated people. But a certain fraction of them are in a vulnerable demographic and another fraction, while not extra vulnerable themselves, lives with or cares for someone who is. The CDC recommends anyone in that situation protect themselves. Doing so means that about half the population simply cannot put themselves in a position to catch this thing. I think if only 24% of teachers are considering leaving the profession then it's likely another 20%+ are considering not following that recommendation. Some of those will be removed from their positions by the disease. Start the over/under at 7%?

[char_]

I just quickly googled teacher age distribution and it looks like roughly 20% of teachers are over 55.

[Benny Profane]

Boomers with good pensions.

[jono]

I just quickly googled teacher age distribution and it looks like roughly 20% of teachers are over 55.

Only 20% over 55 would mean teachers skew slightly younger than the general population, but not by a lot, which was about what I assumed (knowing they're still working). Not sure how you'd go about estimating the other risk factors or rates of co-habitation with at-risk so my statements assumed similar to general population.

Edit to clarify: almost half of Americans are covered by one risk factor or another and homes with multi-generational members and mixed pre-existing condition status (one healthy living with a diabetic or cancer patient, for example) means more than half the population falls under that CDC recommendation.

[old goat]

What's keeping this country running at all--what's keeping us fed and the lights on--is people willing to keep working (mostly because they have no choice if they want to eat and keep the lights on), while the rest of us work from home, or collect our pensions, or collect unemployment, or live off our billions or try to get by somehow. At some point the number of people who have to work is going to have to increase, and not without some danger. There are some very difficult trade offs to be made and the burden of those trade offs will fall much more heavily on some than on others, as it is already.

The president is overjoyed by the latest employment numbers--two million more jobs--but has no appreciation for the fact that that means 2 million more people are at risk.

Pandemics are unfair. Some people live. Some people die. It doesn't get any more unfair than that.

[old goat]

This is hilarious.

Explain.

[Bunion 2020]

The president is overjoyed by the latest employment numbers--two million more jobs--but has no appreciation for the fact that that means 2 million more people are at risk.

Those numbers have already been shown to be either inaccurate or worse, manipulated.

[jono]

Pandemics are unfair. Some people live. Some people die. It doesn't get any more unfair than that.

This statement is both true and guaranteed to be misapplied. The number of people walking around falsely assuming that outcomes are binary is huge. Buried in my response to topsheet is the fact that there should be better actions taken than the meaningless nonsense that's been proposed.

The options are not either resigning ourselves to exposing everyone who doesn't have enough money to hide for a year or just all starving to death. The right answer is to make a plan that considers the risk/reward of various options and minimize the costs both in lives and dollars. We made some huge mistakes early on and that has reduced our options, but not too anything close to zero. Sending everyone home gave a little time to make some plans and while it's stupidly unfortunate that our federal response hasn't been smarter, schools still have time to improve on that (and most everyone else does, too).

[XXX-er]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-vUwoFe5osuRDk

from the snow flake newsfeed, how the commies do it ^^ they are at 7 deaths per million

[jono]

Case in point.

[old goat]

This statement is both true and guaranteed to be misapplied. The number of people walking around falsely assuming that outcomes are binary is huge. Buried in my response to topsheet is the fact that there should be better actions taken than the meaningless nonsense that's been proposed.

The options are not either resigning ourselves to exposing everyone who doesn't have enough money to hide for a year or just all starving to death. The right answer is to make a plan that considers the risk/reward of various options and minimize the costs both in lives and dollars. We made some huge mistakes early on and that has reduced our options, but not too anything close to zero. Sending everyone home gave a little time to make some plans and while it's stupidly unfortunate that our federal response hasn't been smarter, schools still have time to improve on that (and most everyone else does, too).

Agree. But I need to keep it simple for some of the folks.
Re schools, we could have N95's for the teachers--but we won't.

The reason more people need to get back to work is not just that we can't keep spending trillions to keep people home--eventually the markets will not be willing to fund the debt--but to keep the wheels turning. The longer the pandemic goes on the more things break and need to be fixed or replaced, the more people will need to deal with human beings regarding things like their taxes and social security checks, the more people will need dental work and prophylaxis, etc etc. And as more people go to work more people will need someone to watch their kids. I'm not suggesting that these decisions of who goes back to work will be made in any rational or calculating way, certainly not at the Federal level. These will be decisions made ad hoc, at all levels of government and private business and by individual citizens faced with choices.

The shutdown was necessary to buy time--but we've pretty much squandered the time and there's no indication that that's going change--at least not before January. As far as Trump is concerned the pandemic is over.

[old goat]

The degree of politicization of the pandemic more or less dooms the response. The belief that we're operating from a position of stability or security and have the option of managing risk is absurd given the endorsement from the erudite for ongoing mass protests. And the backtracking from compulsory lockdowns to cost-benefit-analyses once the economic damage is apparent shows yet another example of unfitness among the medical field to manage the economy.

Agree with your first sentence. As far as the protests--clearly many thousands of people are willing to risk their health and lives for freedom from oppression. Isn't that what our country is built on--"Give me liberty or give me death." "Live free or die." People, especially black people are more afraid of the cops than of Covid. And who ever said the medical field was responsible for managing the economy?

Thank you for answering. Your initial response reminded me of my wife--I'm supposed to guess what pissed you off.

[XXX-er]

I kind of get what he means but its not the medical system managing anything,

they can only tell the political system what should be done and then let them fuck it all up

how much centralized control or just cooperation is there on pandemic response ?

[MultiVerse]

Re schools, we could have N95's for the teachers--but we won't.

The same can be said for protesters held in detention for 24-48hrs. Either give them masks or stop making so many arrests.

Open-air transmissions are occurring but they are rare. Meanwhile protesters are being tear-gassed, pepper sprayed, stripped of their masks then packed into buses and detention holding pens like sardines. It's an aggressively stupid way to fight an aggressively stupid disease.

[jono]

Well sure, but is it a bad way to put down protests?

[jono]

To be clear, someBroguy, my objection was not to your pointing out the hypocrisy of supporting mass protests (particularly given the response to the relatively miniscule protests against the shutdown). But to this statement:

The belief that we're operating from a position of stability or security and have the option of managing risk is absurd

This implies that managing risk is best (or most valuable) when we are safest rather than when risk is most unavoidable. Of course that's exactly false. A good definition of safety would be a complete absence of risk, meaning no reason to manage anything.

As OG points out, we really aren't discussing decisions at the federal level, since those can be relied on to be useless or worse at this point. But local and even individual choices about how to minimize transmissions continue to be very valuable, even if other people somewhere else are doing something that has the opposite effect.

[MultiVerse]

Well sure, but is it a bad way to put down protests?

Overall, the answer is yes it is a bad way to put down protests. Much if not most of the time a large police presence pursuing discretion and deescalation achieves better results. A protect-and-serve approach works better both at small and at large scale. Kicking down doors en masse does not.

A lot of what we're seeing is in response to the police union protection racket. In NYC, for example, the city's 40,000 police allowed anarchy to take over. Later the police stepped in with violent reprisals, similar to other places like Baltimore and Minneapolis.

It's police union playbook 101: piss us off and we will unleash disorder.

[jono]

Re schools, we could have N95's for the teachers--but we won't.

We won't and there is probably an argument that we shouldn't since they are unlikely to be gap-free on a teacher's face. But will we give them anything at all, or will we decide that only the (partial) protection of an N95 is good enough to bother with? Face shields, for example, are more economical and have less impact on communication. Let's say they're only 90% as effective. Does the binary crowd round that down to 0?