Wednesday, May 13, 2020
I got issues...
But the issue I have is with the rhetoric that is being spilled by the dotard, by the gop on the whole, and by "conservative media outlets." They still are holding steadfast that it's not a threat to the general public and life should "return to normal"... that more people die from the flu, from car crashes, or from birdwatching.
They quote the numbers correctly (somewhat surprisingly; who knew? They can do math). But what they're missing is context.
I fell into a bit of a rabbit hole yesterday, following comments about school reopening. This group took umbrage with keeping schools closed, and called anyone who believed in science, who was exercising caution, a libtard, socialist, leftist, dem something or another. They told of personal experiences, and their braveness because they're unlikely to get it (even if they are in a vulnerable age group).
Because obviously bravery and name calling will prevent this virus from spreading.
The context they are missing is how virulent this is. How it can spread quickly among people. And how it is mutating in various ways, making it harder to really understand. So yes, the odds of dying from it remain relatively low - for the time being. And yeah, the odds of getting fairly sick from it are a little higher, but still low. But the number of people who have tested positive is still low *because we've taken steps to slow the spread*. With no immunity and no vaccine, we can't just go "okay, we're good, let's just go back to large gatherings."
It's not that simple.
A quick bit of math. Let's suppose 20% of the population gets it (say 66,000,000 people). And 2% of them die. That's 1,320,000 people who might die, just because we want to return to a previous state of being.
You may say 20% seems like a lot. A recent count says that 8.3 million tests have been done in the US. There have been 1.4 million confirmed cases. That's about 17% and excludes people who didn't get tested, but died of the virus anyway. And since this is a small percentage of the population who have access to (and in some cases can afford testing), I would posit the number is actually much higher, perhaps 30% instead of 20%.
You may also say (ignorantly) that it's less than 1% of the population on the whole. Then you really don't get this. There's a secondary issue that there don't appear to be any antibodies that last, and no immunity. So you could get it more than once. And we don't know how your body will react to a second (or third, or fourth) exposure. So keeping it running through society will just keep the death toll mounting. Maybe we develop an immunity over time. Maybe there's limited effect after a first exposure. We don't know enough yet to make a determination - and that's a scary notion. So it could be a continual, repeating 1% of the population that dies off.
But in any case, the rate of acceleration would probably increase, meaning it propagates faster. And that would overwhelm healthcare in every city.
So. No. The only viable option is to stay the course, and find new ways to conduct business. Sure, we could allow for takeout, or limited number of barber seats to be used. But maybe they have different hours to accommodate more people. But movies? Sports events? Large gatherings? Those don't seem like good ideas. And face masks should be worn at all times for now - at least until we know more.
Maybe we keep looking for ways to allow for less-risky travel and vacations. Maybe we just need to be smarter about how we approach it, rather than diving in headfirst or "throwing caution to the wind."
AP reports on antibody test, gets one fact as the headline, then reports speculate wildly
The test was a great start, checking antibody levels on most MLB players and people associated with the clubs. It was not the test for the virus, and it doesn't mean that no one had it - only that they don't have the antibody. As the researcher said "this is good and bad" because it's hard to draw any conclusions. And besides these are mostly young, healthy men who have been using masks and washing hands, and who have been in quarantine. So it's not necessarily conclusive, in itself.
The study goes off for peer review, and then we'll know more about It. But the follow up testing will also be interesting to see how it goes.
But of course the <1% having the antibody grabbed the attention, though the AP struggled to explain why it was meaningful. Of course "sports!" Latched onto it because that's what they do in the absence of games, and started positing that this means baseball can begin soon....because...again no one can quite explain why they think that (intelligently anyway).
But at least we're seeing some actual scientific studies being conducted. Here's to hoping there are a lot more, and soon!
Headline "Under 1% of MLB Employees Test Positive for Virus Antibodies | Sports News | US News"
Sent from my iPad
Tuesday, May 12, 2020
Trump Has Lost the Plot - The Atlantic
Honestly a pet rock would be doing a better job and have higher ratings - just because it wouldn't be actively trying to undermine any sense of reality, undercutting science, or just blathering on about what a great job it's doing.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/trump-has-lost-plot/611548/
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