Actually, it is not that cut and dry. Can't speak to malnutrition specifically, but in the spirit of weighing things up as is done with Covid vs 'Cure' (being worse than the disease): Health in general and on a national level (there's differences between urban and rural areas, though) did not decline as much as people might assume based on 'common sense':

Life and death during the Great Depression | PNAS

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0324202055.htm

The 2nd is kinda more sceptical, but even it concludes that it isn't cut and dry at all.

I guess one explanation would be that while there was certainly more people reliant on help, it was also much more freely given and people were a lot more mindfull of ressources and taking risks both physically and in terms of lifestyle (just spitballing !)
Maybe enough people gave up smoking to make a difference (plus, Prohibition for all it's flaws was in effect).

Essentially suicides went up, accidental deaths went down (only looking at car accidents here, but there's other studies looking at accidents in general), everything else stayed surprisingly stable both short and longterm. Life expectancy actually went up significatly more during the great Depression than in the years preceding it or those after it.

Now, one problem is that i don't see the US in a position or willing to put in the same 'community effort' as during the great depression. People are still worried about the wrong or undeserving people getting free money or if that won't result in them not wanting to work.

I realized the next morning that my math was an order of magnitude off, but I stand by the idea. I don't know 3000 people either, but there may be 3000 in the greater community that are 2-3 steps removed from me (actually, I work in a pretty large building so between that and school, it's probably more). So "3000 friends" really represents that. And, that group is not all under 40, so the death rate wouldn't realistically be just .5% anyway. I'm curious for instance how many fatalities we see out of the Smithfield plant. There's what, 600 confirmed cases there now? Betting there are going to be more than three fatalities.

You're saying that you went for groceries and paint, saw people out and are guaranteeing Buffalo is going to end up like NYC (so in otherwords Buffalo is going to have more deaths than the next dozen worse STATES combined) and I'm the one who is panicking? If you are telling people to stay home why are you out buying paint? What was so essential to paint that you went out and risked everyone's life for? Why didn't you have groceries delivered? How do you know you were not a carrier that passed it onto a cashier that lives at home who passed it onto their parents who one of now could be in a hospital thanks to you? Why was your need to go out for stuff more important than all the people you could have impacted?

You clearly felt it was ok to make a grocery and paint supply run. How is that different than any of the other people you are criticizing for being out? I guess the shutdown didn't mean "you" huh?

Which one of us sounds like panic again?

I have some shocking news for you - people die everyday. It's tragic that people are dying from this virus but is it more tragic than if they died of heart disease, cancer or something else? This has nothing to do with "sacrificing human life for business" - a business isn't important - it's the people who own the business and work for the business that are important. If you are financially ruined then that business dies and with it dies opportunities for the owner as well as EVERY PERSON who works for it because if those people had the resources to own and run a business they would be doing so.

This virus is not going away today, tomorrow or maybe ever. There is no guarantee a cure or vaccine will come along and even then it may continue to exist and prove fatal whether you catch it today or five years from now.

There is no possible way we can prevent all suffering and loss here either from death from the virus or financial devastation and ruin for living people who still need to go on living. We were told to stay at home to flatten the curve. To make sure that people would not be dying in hospital waiting rooms because there would be no beds. Our hospitals are not overrun and in fact they set up a temporary hospital at the old Cobo Hall and decided they don't need it. Sounds like the stay at home plan accomplished what it set out to do.

This is not a "worthless right side pissing point" - tell me what are you going to do with the millions of people who will have mental illness, addictions, sickness and disease from malnutrition, lack of ability to pay for medicine, fear of going to the doctor or hospital, inability to have procedures done in a hospital, increases in domestic abuse, lack of education for children, lack of financial resources to pay for basic necessities including a place to live? What will you do about the suicides from these things? The riots and violence and pillaging from this? The deaths or otherwise lifelong reductions in quality of life? What is your plan for those millions and millions of people if we continue to just shut down everything for months and months?

The fact is that everything right now points to that most people who get this virus will recover in a short period of time if they feel any impact at all. The people who suffer from the above will NOT recover in a short period of time IF AT ALL and just like we want to prevent as many people as possible from suffering from the virus I think we ALSO (not instead) should try to prevent as much of the latter suffering as well. Wanting that does not diminish or ignore that this virus is deadly for a small percentage of the population nor does it equate sacrificing those people in the name of almighty evil corporate republican business. People who have serious underlying health issues SHOULD CONTINUE to stay at home and avoid the public while we buy as much time as possible looking for a cure or vaccine that works. We can be SMART and use scientific data about what people can and should be doing now instead of being paralyzed by fear.

What I was getting after is that the R side isn't interested in making things like unemployment easy to get - they WANT it to be a shitshow, they don't want people getting "free" money. They want roadblocks. The system is working as designed. You can't change that overnight (and still being in control of the legislature, they probably don't want to anyway).

Let’s give it a shot. Time to prove Floridians can be responsible and show it was the out of towners that were the problem last month.;)

North Florida beaches among 1st to reopen since closures

Can you tell this to the folks who go ape shit if a white girl gets killed by someone with darker skin? k thx

Tell me this was just a failed attempt at humor.

It's not about those who are rich and have multiple houses - in fact summer houses up north here are not expensive and many average working class people own them because they are great spots for hunting or fishing or just relaxing in the wilderness. People can get a cabin for a very reasonable price because its just a place out in the woods that you can't even go to during winter in some cases.

It is the abject stupidity that someone who lives in Michigan cannot travel to their summer house up north yet someone from NYC would be able to do just that. Tell me how that makes sense? (That and that the government can try and ban you from your own property)

But go ahead and ignore the point that our governor is now doing things just haphazardly if you can try and spin it as OMG rich people want to sacrifice all the rest of us at the almighty altar of the stock market.

We have a D governor (who wants to be VP and not governor) - maybe she should spend more time working on that and less time promoting herself on cable news channels. I mean she's in charge - if it's going wrong it is clearly her fault right or does that only apply if a R is in charge?

I think it's sad and tragic if anyone is murdered, don't you?

Well she is a governor and not king. She can't pass legislation at will.

Or you know the folks who keep bringing up 9/11 to do heinous shit.

I guess I am lost on when this plan went from flattening the curve to preventing every single COVID death? Please correct me where I am wrong on this line of thinking...

* Person A has a bad immune system or whatever unknown factor goes into dying from COVID. If they got it on March 19th and died how would they not die if they instead get this disease July 19th?

* No place in the United States outside of possibly NYC (maybe not even NYC?) ever encountered the shortage of ICU beds and respirators that Italy did so the curve flattening worked.

When did the plan change? Honest question because it seems as though now its now become a false dichotomy between the saving the economy vs saving lives but I never thought that was the point of any of this. Wasn't the point to avoid hospitals being overwhelmed? How would the 35K death number be any different besides going back in a time machine and doing something different in January? I guess I just don't see how this got so polarizing? I mean I shouldn't be surprised it got polarized but I don't get how this is now a red state/blue state or whatever the hell that even means.

You flatten the curve, slowly reopen with social distancing, and then flatten the curve again if needed right?

It's harder to put the genie back into the bottle. The fear with NYC is that it may be the first harbinger of what may happen in other places. Now NYC is denser than everywhere else, but the spread and death rate was far higher than expected. I think a lot of Governors are being extra cautious because they don't want to see NYC come to them - because once that starts its hard to contain.

Still you, by a large margin.


There is a big difference. You don't "catch" heart disease or cancer. In some respects, many can control if you catch high blood pressure or diabetes. There is already a massive effort to cure cancer.

You are not in control of how or when you catch Covid-19 unless you just never leave your house again. And most agree that approach is not feasible. HOWEVER, if you can mitigate loss of life by taking action, don't you agree that you should take that action? I agree that the "cure can't be worse than the disease". But this idea that a depression will cause hundreds of thousands of deaths is just not correct.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...ates-46713514/

People's lives financially will be hurt short-term. But as I said before, it seems to me that society's #1 job is to implement policy that keeps people alive. That has to be job 1 right now, period.

It's good to be cautious. But it would be interesting to live in a country where some states are extending lock-downs possibly 2+ years until a vaccine is fully deployed (unless the vaccine doesn't work all the time, then a longer lockdown I guess), while other states are going to do what they're planning to do in Europe - gradually re-entry, mandate precautions in opened facets of society, monitor the data, test.

Because I have the same confusion as panerd. The rhetoric seems to have switched to a sentiment of amending nothing about the stay-at-home orders until it is safe for everyone. That seems like a fantasy.

Haha, the paint thing caught my eye too. Reminds me of neighborhood social media posts complaining about people who are Home Depot for the wrong reasons, posted by people who are also there, but for the right things. Paint I guess.

The funny thing is, nobody here is saying that the precautions and orders aren't necessary and haven't slowed this down. But all it takes is acknowledging the awesome cost of that, and to worry about its broader impact, and consider what governments can do to address and balance that risk, and you're a right-wing nutjob now. Or even a racist I guess.

You can care about both things.

It's a fantasy that we're going to "knock this out" with some Netflix binging. I worry that people who this won't be economically devastating for (which is probably most of this board), are making these pronouncements and insults from a very comfortable place, insulated from reality and where we're going. If they're going to tell me I don't care about people dying, then I'm going to tell them that they don't care about the costs to peoples' livelihoods as long as they get theirs. I don't think that's true, but if the former is fair game, the latter is too. If we're only allowed to care about one aspect of this and not two or more.

Yeah I think I get that, I live in St. Louis County which isn't New York or New Orleans or Detroit but also definitely is seeing it's fair share of devastation and is currently under a stay at home order. The County Executive just extended the order until May. All of this seems to go along with my original post your responded to.

How then does it become...
Side A: We need to reopen now! (Doesn't make sense we haven't flattened the curve yet)
Side B: You are killing people! (Also doesn't make sense. There is no cure, no vaccine, and no hospital shortage yet. Every person that died would have died 2 months ago, in 2 months)

When the graph of deaths however goes down then it can no longer be about fear of some people dying because that was never what this was about to begin with right? I'm not sure 75% of the people are following what flattening the curve means.

Yeah, I think you're right. I don't think the goal is to prevent every single death. I think the real debate is when is the right time to open up right now, and to me that is a real tough question. The answers are different in different places due to population density and infection rates, etc.

I will go back to Gary's point and say that the Michigan governor deserves some criticism. I think the NY people deserve some criticism. Trump deserves some criticism. I love how it has been handled in Ohio, California, and Washington. There are places for criticism that is not a red/blue thing.

Also, I don't know if it was mentioned but I just saw that US deaths yesterday was reported as 4,951, which is much higher than the previous high of 2,751 (which was Wednesday)

That's just silly. Gary is literally saying the recent orders from Gov. Whitmer aren't necessary.

And plenty of people can acknowledge the awesome cost of what is going and worry about the impact and how to balance that without being called 'nutjobs'. It's all over the Mental Health thread, for one. I'm having a civil discussion with panerd about it right now.

This is just gaslighting nonsense IMO.

There are definitely Side A and Side B people, but I think most Governors (Republican as well as Democrat - Gov. DeWine of OH and Gov. Hogan of Maryland have very strict SAH orders as well), aren't exactly saying Side B. But they are saying if you don't adhere to staying at home, we may indeed have a ventilator/hospital shortage. Because they've seen what has happened in NYC and in New Jersey (which had to receive shipments of ventilators from California).

And therefore those people who died now may not die in 2 months because they have ventilators that they may not have if things are loosened.

Though I think some Side B people get waaay too dramatic to try to get people to adhere to staying at home because they may not understand what flattening the curve means (allowing hospitals to treat those who need intensive care).

I think, as I said earlier, NYC has really scared the shit out of a lot of Governors. Atlanta as well ran out of ICU beds earlier this month (hopefully the SAH has opened some up).

Her recent orders are not necessary.

Person A lives in Michigan - cannot travel to cottage up north.

Person B lives in NYC - can travel to cottage in northern part of Michigan.

That stops the spread of COVID-19 how?


You can go to Home Depot and buy plumbing items. But you cannot go to the outdoor section of the store to buy plants.

That stops the spread of COVID-19 how?


You can go out with someone on a rowboat to fish in a lake

You cannot go out with someone on a boat with a motor to fish in a lake

That stops the spread of COVID-19 how?


I'm 100% serious - please enlighten me on why these orders make sense and help stop the spread of COVID-19 and are not just haphazard orders by someone who really doesn't know what she is doing.

I've read in this thread that a concern for the broader impacts of this is a fake right-wing talking point, and that the only people who are concerned about opening the economy at some point are rich people who won't be impacted by the dangers.

Hey, but I hope you're right. But when I see any post about the strategies and policies involving with re-opening portions of the economy, there is a lot of pushback to that. But I don't think we mean opening things TOMORROW. I sure don't. So when people respond with broad defiance to that concept being expressed at all, in any timeline, it feels like they're saying we should never open up, or not until a vaccine is fully deployed, or, that they have the belief that if we just stay inside for some period of time everything will go away on its own, or that they're personally financially comfortable so we shouldn't have concerns about the broader impacts. Maybe they don't mean that either, but, if they don't, I'm not even sure what they're disagreeing about.

My one source, Worldmeters, had 2174 for yesterday.

From an epidemioloy Standpoint the right time to start opening things is when the Reproductive rate (how many people one person statistically spreads it to) is below 1 , meaning cases are reducing, and the current active cases is at a number where you think this + hidden spread (which you need to guess based on antibody studies and Reading between the numbers) is manageable with the infrastructure you have available (tests, Health care).


Then you open with the goal of not going above a level where you can keep it close to that. Germany is now solidly under 1 at 0.7 and has very good diagnostic and about the highest per capita hospital capacity (including intensive care and personell as well). And still experts are torn of wether even a soft reopening isn't 2 weeks too soon.

The difference between 1,2 and 1.6 f.e is already massive. Say you start with 500k undetected infected still left and after reopening the rate goes from 0.9 to either 1.2/1.6. So take that 500k x1.2/1.6 multiple times. Do it 5 times and you are at 1.25 mio (or 750k new Infections) vs 5.25 mio.
For Germany 1.2 is already about where the current projections have the healthcare system completely collapsing in mid july !

It is not possible to achieve Herd Immunity within even 4-5 years without completely obliterating the health care system for essentially the entire time or stop treating Covid. The goal is never to allow such a situation and that is tougher than people realize. Early Reproduction rate for Wuhan is thought to be 5+, for other countries pre social distancing 2.5 - 3 (already knowing it is a new disease helped a lot simply by having people quarantined etc).

The first one is easy to explain. A Governor can restrict people in her state from going from one location to another but cannot Constitutionally prevent people from other states from entering her state. It's part of the Privileges and Immunities Clause (edit: had the wrong clause initially).

Secondly, perhaps it has been determined that plumbing is essential (if your plumbing ain't working that's an emergency) while planting is not. I don't know the reasoning, but I do know Michigan isn't the only state that has put a kibosh on planting supplies. Perhaps the health experts have a reason there (likely non-essential). Of course Home Depot isn't the only place that sells planting materials - there are dedicated stores to do that.

I've read that some folks were abusing the order on motor boats - namely the ones with bigger motor boats having parties on the boat. I know that happened in Florida. So perhaps the idea that non-motor boats tend to be smaller factored into that. Perhaps the next step should be to allow motor boats but only under a certain size.

Interesting. I got my number from the Washington Post. Wonder where they got their number... they are saying total deaths of 33,318. What does Worldmeters say?

Though it may be due to NYC reclassifying some deaths of people suspected of COVID but not tested (considering that the non-COVID death rate in NYC was far higher than usual, they probably realized they were severely undercounting)

35,353 in psuedo real time.

I have seen broad defiance when someone (such as the President) says open up the country on May 1. Having a plan to open up the country has been very positively received in these forums (the California/Oregon/Washington starting to plan for when to re-open for instance), but based on health experts and having a real plan of action. Not a random date.

Worldometer has 35.

Main difference will be that Post might take CDC/State confirmed cases and thus has to live with data delay (which can be multiple days) whereas Worldometer takes Johns Hopkins data i think who compile it in real time based on local data.

As for daily numbers, Worldometer makes the cutoff at i think 8 PM Eastern time, whereas official data likely have either afternoon or morning.

But see that is the point - none of these things make sense. You are already at Home Depot - what difference does it make what aisle you're in?

If 20 people are on some big boat having a party then why not issue those people a citation? Why prevent some guy on a lake from being able to go out and fish?

If she can restrict people from moving from a location why doesn't she just restrict people from moving from the area where the trouble spots are - what is the threat if there's not spread in your current area?

The problem with her recent orders are that they appear to be simply her flexing her EO power and don't have any real sense behind them which simply in turn makes everyone question everything. The curve is not getting any more flat because only half of Home Depot is open for business.

Ohio announced May 1 for a very limited re-opening. And based on how well we've handled the shutdown I'm willing to give Dewine some leeway to figure things out here. He is an R and I am a D. So to say that this is all a red/blue thing ignores the fact that there are some R's out there acting responsibly, and some D's who are idiots. That won't change.

But there has to be a plan and reasoning for doing it. Not just based on some angry people having protests and whining on a message board and a president with random tweets that contradicts his press conferences.

I just want to single this out, because this kind of thing will help. If only half the store is open, fewer people will shop. It won't be as effective as shutting down the store completely, but it will reduce demand if some products are unavailable. It's exactly the kind of balanced approach to claim to want to see happen.

Ok, so you narrow tailor the order. Gardening sales are allowed in stores that sell essential products - all of a sudden gardening stores start selling chips and saying they are selling food - an essential product. A broad ban allows for those attempts to be nipped in the bud. Or you could expend your police power on checking out every gardening selling business to see if they have enough essential product sales?

And what JPhillips said. Would result in less people in the store, especially those only looking for gardening supplies.


Police resources once again. And a blanket ban tends to have a dampening effect on people trying to "test the limit" of the rule. I'm sure Governors are in conversation with their police telling them where they are stretched thin.


"Trouble spots" are a constantly moving definition. Lots of places that had no cases are now outbreak areas due to things like church services, due to asymptomatic spread. There is no guarantee that Detroit and the like is going to be the only trouble spot in Michigan

So where you see no reason for them, I can see plenty of rational reasoning for some of the bans. Some of it may be a slight overreach or overly broad, but no one wants to be another NY State or get into a "what's the limit" sort of battle on these things.

I'm not sure that's true. My Home Depot and Lowes have their garden centers open. I've been 2-3 times to get seed, mulch, and soil for my garden. I've not gone for any other reason. Point being, if area X is closed, there are Y number of people who will never go to Home Depot at all.

That having been said, that sure does seem like a stupid way to do it. Here in NC (or maybe it's just Guilford County, I lose track of which restrictions are state vs. county,) it's "no more than X% (I think it's 10) of fire capacity can be in any building at one time." So all aisles in Lowe's, Home Depot, Sam's, Costco, Walmart, and the grocery stores are open, but it's really easy to social distance because there just aren't many people in there. All the stores have lines on the floor near the checkout marking 6 feet of distance, and all stores that I go to now have shields.

It does sound like her methods are kinda dumb. It showed up earlier in this thread that folks in my neck of the woods are driving farther than almost anywhere else in the country. I just checked, though, and NC is among the lowest number of deaths per capita in the country, so I'm guessing we're doing *something* right despite the fact that we're fishing, driving to the parks, hiking, and buying non-essential stuff for gardens. (And I'm closer to R than D, and my governor is a D, but in my estimation he has done a splendid job. He has especially balanced state and local control to help deal with urban/rural disparities. ("These are orders for the state, but if your locality has more strict orders, those supercede mine.") Basically, it seems that the state-wide orders are aimed to be enough to keep rural areas safe, and he's counting on country/city leadership in places like Charlotte/Greensboro/Raleigh to do more if necessary.

You also typically do not survive those things if you do get them. The vast majority of people seem to survive catching COVID-19



Uh-oh, get prepared to defend yourself against those who feel that statement means you're an evil corporate loving goon that is using it as secret code for let all the poor people die so stocks will go up!

You are not in control if you get heart disease or cancer either and even so unless you literally have no contact with the outside world (meaning no deliveries of anything) you could still contract this virus even if you don't leave your house but that's impossible. We all would need food and supplies at some point. The fact is we have no idea why a small percentage of people die from this nor are we probably likely to figure out that anytime soon.

And not once have I advocated for not mitigating loss. I have zero issue with the steps we have taken up until recently to flatten the curve. It is only once my governor started overreaching that I began to take issue with her orders because we have done what was asked of us and we accomplished what the purpose was - the hospitals were not overrun. People were not dying in the streets and waiting room of this. The stay at home order was meant to allow for hospitals to be able to provide care for anyone who needs it - not to lock us down and shut down the economy for some undetermined date or milestone. When we have done what was asked and accomplished what we were supposed to and then received more draconian restrictions on top of that I think it is only natural to start questioning what is really going on and whether or not the person in charge is qualified.



I think people's financial lives will be hurt if short-term is a month (done already) or maybe two. The further we go out hurt turns to ruined. You don't "bounce back" from losing your home. Your business doesn't "bounce back" once you can't pay the rent and the loans you took out to keep going and its bankrupt. It's gone. It's an empty building and dozens, hundreds, thousands of jobs lost. Nobody moves in a week later and starts it all up again because nobody has the money to do that (except the uber wealthy and is that what we want? The richest of the rich to swoop up the rest of what they don't own?)

We can keep people alive and still slowly start to function again. The virus isn't going away this month or next month or maybe ever. People are still going to contract it and die and they're dying right now with full medical care. They are not dying because there are bed shortages or ventilator shortages - they're dying with the best efforts we can make. What more can we do to keep people alive? If your body is going to catch it then I think you're going to catch it - all it takes is one trip to the store or even one delivery to your house.

I don't know how much more clear about this I can be. I am not an advocate of going back to business as usual.

People shouldn't go into nursing homes. They shouldn't go around those who are highly compromised. Those who are should stay at home and have little to no contact with anyone for as long as possible. People who are sick with anything should stay home. We shouldn't pack tens of thousands of people in a stadium for anything right now.

Given all of that...we have to find a way to start helping everyone else not just stay alive but live. Slowly. Cautiously. And when the data says their community has flattened that curve. And in doing so people will still continue to contract the virus and a certain percentage will still need serious medical care and will get that care because the hospital can handle the numbers.

I hope that Remdesivir is a successful treatment - it won't stop people from getting it or spreading it but it could get them home alive and that is fantastic news. But the time to knowing whether or not that is possible and to have enough supply is still a ways off. A possible vaccine that is safe and effective is at least a year off. Once we have those things we can go back to something more normal but until then we can only be on lockdown so long and there has to be something in between that and "normal" that we start working towards in the near future.

That might be part of the one of the differences of perspectives of this, how bad you think the economic impact could be. I don't care about "short-term" financial struggle. I do care and worry about millions falling into poverty permanently. I don't know which one we'll end up being closer to, but the latter scares me a lot. It's heartbreaking to see people around here already reaching out to strangers on social media asking for diapers and food for their kids. Which is why I mostly align with our governor's position of - we have to extend these restrictive orders, but we must plan right now for a gradual re-opening and figure out the safest ways to open as much as possible. (It's been nice to see a few small businesses opening up for curbside business this week after the governor amended the order to allow that, when he extended every other restriction. Part of re-opening is also evolving the way that we do business to make it safer). Not only is that a critical part of all this, it is also the part we have some control over. Which psychologically, is pretty important to push. Telling or giving people the idea that there's no tangible hope on the horizon, or worse, that we're just fucked until and if there's a vaccine deployed next year or the year after (if that), will just encourage increasingly desperate people to violate existing orders, or start resorting to crime.

And after the wave of service industry job losses, and then a wave of white collar job losses, comes the wave of drastically reduced public services for years to come from the loss of tax revenue. Those impacts are felt a year after the direct economic impacts like business closures. That's some scary shit to me too, as I see what cities are going to end up cutting. Programs and lifelines that took a long time to get implemented in poor parts of the country. (Most personal to me and my work - drug treatment programs, domestic violence victim support programs, diversion courts). All this stuff is going to be gutted, all this stuff that it took decades to implement. New York cut $6 billion for next year's budget from what the plan was in January, and nobody is really sure of the cascading impact of cutting that much so quickly. There's no way around that now, but, there's still a balance to consider and difficult choices to made, and it is worth trying to move forward and to plan to move forward, even at some calculated risk, and an acceptance of idea that things are not going to be again like they were before. Even if that just means that maybe 2022 can be a little better than 2021 if we do the best we can to sensibly bringing some things online in 2020. There will be some more fed bailouts, but as we just saw with the small business loan being tapped out, we can't trust these programs to be implemented properly and not just be exploited by those with the means to do so (massive corporations getting small business loans for their subsidiaries, etc.) And cities and states can't print their own money or go into debt.

My bold on the last part for emphasis

Exactly - if she wants less people milling about Home Depot then let greenhouses be open for people who want to buy things to plant. That would be a GREAT solution because it would help those small businesses. Instead it's just nobody can buy anything related to gardening.

There's a way to do this with common sense and logic - she hasn't figured that part out and hopefully now that she is in a coalition with other midwest governors maybe she will let the others like DeWine do the thinking and just go along with them.

And to be clear, of COURSE there is a point where the combination of deaths due to economic breakdown (starvation, suicide, child/spousal abuse ramped up by isolation and poverty, crimes committed by desperate people who have never broken a law in their lives, etc.) can surpass the number of deaths from the virus. I'm scratching my head that some people can't seem to acknowledge that.

(And I'm one who thinks that summer camps should be closed, school called off the rest of this year and perhaps Fall 2020, and--unless medication proves to be much better than thought--that we should have no mass gatherings in stadiums for at least the rest of 2020.)

I don't think anyone has said they aren't concerned about the economic impact. However, I think people have economic concern and health concern on vastly different places on a sliding scale.

But it's also disingenuous to call it a "fake right-wing talking point". There is a pretty large contingent of folks concern trolling about the economy. They don't give a crap about social programs or inequity or poor people normally (bootstraps!) but, now, all of a sudden they do?

SI

Quantifying the number to some level as a result of the above is going to be much harder then determining how many people die from Covid-19. That some people seem to think that death counts from Covid are a conspiracy to trample peoples rights and freedoms and keep the country shut down so they can have more control over you. Good luck with a rational number you can generate to have any sort of reasonable conversation about it.

I think concern for the economy is being mocked and misconstrued, but I know we're all interpreting this differently. (What got me into this again after taking a little time away was a post literally saying, "fuck the economy" and others questioning the real motives of people who express these concerns).

And I think the word economy is so cold. I'm not talking about 401k balances or "Trump's precious stock market." Maybe that's what people are thinking of when I feel they're being dismissive.

Well it's hard to trust Trump or his administration when they talk about the economy, tbf.

I'm having a hard time finding where I'm comfortable placing the balance on the scale.

Part of this is that I think we're already doomed to some financial mess. I've thought we were due for one for quite a while and this was just the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. It just happened now instead of 2021-2022 and is more acute. So there's a "sunken cost" there and anyone arguing "it's financial ruin vs saving coronavirus lives" isn't being fair as those both have weights on each end, though we have a broad range for those weights. But if you thought the economy was humming strong and in great shape, you would weigh this a lot differently.

But how much of people's weights is "damage done" vs "future damage". We put the economy on near hold for more than a month, possibly longer to prevent a worst case scenario. If most places couldn't weather 1 month then closing down for, say, 3 months matters little - they were already doomed.

I'm still not sure how "restarted" anything will be until there's a vaccine anyway and that's so very far away. Like there's very little that President Trump or Governor Whitmer can do to get more people to feel safe on airplanes or in hotels or sitting in stadiums (well, that's not entirely true - you can build a significant testing apparatus, but we're stumbling along the way with that and it almost feels like we're going backwards). Those are businesses built on X% occupancy and that X is going to be significantly lower until much of the public feels it is safe to do those things.

SI

Absolutely, but I don't see anyone here who is claiming or implying it's a conspiracy. Perhaps molson's comment helps clarify this for me...
Yeah, I get the impression that the folks in this thread aren't talking as much about the market as mass unemployment and poverty.

Right, and I don't trust Trump or his administration to properly address the aftermath of this. I feel that a singular laser focus on indefinite lockdown necessarily puts more trust in Trump to fix everything later. Which is why I like seeing the governors coming together to plot a cautious path forward.

Edit: People are saying that this all could be an opportunity to change things for the better, the "let's not get back to normal because normal wasn't working", thing. But with Trump the opposite is more likely. He will take advantage of this to make things worse for the rest of us - we've already seen him firing people overseeing the bailouts. There is economic and political opportunity here for those in power. That's why it's critical to worry about and address the economic fallout now at the state and local levels. Otherwise we're just leaving it all to Trump.

I was coming from a more macro view, and a larger view of the populace/media/leadership than just the views being expressed in this thread.

One word. Trust.

I speak as one Floridian who lives in the state of Florida since the beginning of this. You all watched this play out #FloridaMan so tell me where I might be wrong.

In this state, we did not take the coronavirus seriously at all at the beginning. Fine, we are not that different then every other state. As things began to ramp up, there were calls for measures to be taken. Not the measures we have now. But smaller measures to try to limit the spread. Wash your hands and try not to do any excessive touching.Those measures were ignored and laughed at. The numbers rose. The calls for the stronger measures grew a bit louder, they were ignored as well. Remember when we asked people not to get into groups of more than ten on the beach and not crowd into bars? Do you remember those pictures? Excuse after excuse was made for why there was no reason to implement any formal measures at all. Again, all of this was when everything was wide open. People ignored all of the recommendations and the requests. This is not something I am making up. It is documented. Because we were remained open, while other states were closing down, everyone came here and continue to ignore the recommendations. The numbers continued to rise. Counties began implement their own measures. What did people do? Just moved from one part of the state to another. Exercising the rights? Absolutely. Continuing to spread the virus in places that did have lower cases? Absolutely! Again, remember the picture of the difference between beaches at the county line? The one where one side was completely full and the other side was completely empty? I gave the example in this thread were people playing Ultimate Frisbee in the park. Some of them worked in a local restaurant. Guess what had to shut down because of workers being infected? Finally the statewide safer at home measures were begrudgingly(IMO) started on April 3. That is two weeks ago.

Here are the businesses that have remained open

Healthcare providers
Grocery stores, other food providers and distributors
Businesses that provide social services
Media and telecomm providers
Banks and financial institutions
Hardware stores
Contractors who provide services that are deemed "necessary to maintaining the safety, sanitation, and essential operation residences and other structures"
Mail and shipping services
Laundry providers
Gas stations
Restaurants that provide food for carryout or takeout
Schools (only permitted to be open to facilitate online learning)
Office suppliers
Marinas and docks
The transportation sector (Airlines, trains, buses, taxis, etc)
Funeral homes and mortuaries
Assisted living facilities
Gun stores
Landscape and pool care
Childcare facilities that operate with groups of 10 or fewer
Pet stores and veterinarian services
Utilities services
Constructions site
Manufacturing facilities
Waste management services
Residential and commercial real estate and settlement services

Within two to three days of the statewide measure being enacted, people were already breaking the measures. People were still talking about this like it was the flu and demanding the order be stopped. People were complaining about how dare the grocery store only allow senior citizens in the grocery stores during the first hour of opening. All the while people were already talking about opening the state back up. Not planning to open the state up in a measured way. Opening everything back up the way it was on February 1st.

I say all that to say no I don't trust that people are looking to open back up in a responsible way. I don't trust that people don't mean opening everything up tomorrow. I would love to advocate for the reopening sooner rather than later. Yes, we are now beginning the process not after two or three months as many have claimed. The statewide order here came started on April 3rd. That is two weeks ago. I hope I am proven wrong. But I have recent evidence that we will ignore that small restrictions and rush back to normal, damn the consequences for others. My point is we don't allow that to happen in other crises we deem to be serious and a danger to people's health. Again, I am only talking about Florida but I believe others have similar concerns about their local area as well. I do have concerns about the local small businesses. I don't want anyone to have to go out of business because of this. I also recognize that a second shutdown would be even worse in my opinion. That is why I want this one to be done as correctly as possible. Ultimately, I want to see as much concern about getting the number of tests that we need in Florida as I have seen trying to get the beaches open again. I don't know if our state leaders have the bandwidth to do both and they have made it pretty clear which side they are more concerned with.

On a sidenote, I really hope all this concern about domestic violence, mental health and suicides continues and was not a tool to achieve that reopening goals. I am not making any accusations. It is an observation that is based on the collective concern or lack thereof IMO that we had for these issues before we were asked to stay home a bit more.

My concern from the get go with regards to the economy is driven by your same thought process. If we crater the economy and that leads to deaths via suicide, poverty, etc., what have we really gained?

The problem I have with many, especially if you go to Facebook or social media, you are immediately shouted down because you are the 1% and you just want money, etc.

Another issue, is how many food plants have to shut down before we run afoul of issues related to food shortages. People say food processing plants have to protect workers, but the way they are set up, the workers are going to be in close proximity to one another vs. a paper mill or some other manufacturing facility. There isn't a good way around it without significantly altering their processing methods which means reworking the plant's process flow, and that disrupts operation of the plant as well.

With regards to the market, I love it being down, some of the investment I have put off over the years, I can finally make up for.

But, I will also say I do have concern for an item PilotMan brought up, and that is governmental controls in regards to sheltering in place, but this is the no politics thread so I will leave it at that.

We had another record number of US deaths in 24 hours. 4591


A friend equated it with having a 9/11 every day. Yup :(

And it's time for it to start blooming in rural areas and cities that didn't lockdown

Someone please show me some studies that a depressed economy leads to markedly more suicides / an increase in the countries' mortality rate.

People keep saying this like it naturally follows, but I honestly don't believe it does.

It is an incredible hardship for some, I do get that. But I just don't think you are going to see mass suicide that is obviously just as bad as an uncontrolled pandemic.

Maybe we're all talking past each other, but I don't think those concerns are being made either in good faith or with accurate information other than anecdotal.

The protest in Minnesota looks like it was organized by Alex Jones. Lots of Fake Crisis signs.

Just do some googling. There's a lot of articles on the topic.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/recessi...merica-europe/


So what exactly is my ulterior motive for being concerned about the economy?

I'm concerned about the economy too. There is concern, and then there is "we have to stop the Covid mitigation efforts because the residual effects on the economy are too great". Which I believe is a misinformed take.

Those worldwide suicide numbers for 3 years across an economic downturn, we'll probably have that many people die in the US in the next couple of days from Covid-19. It's not a negligible number, but if we're talking about what makes mathematical sense, that's not it.

Not everybody who expresses these concerns was partying in Florida or is protesting lockdowns. But I feel like you and others are trying to group us all together. Why else is the Florida stuff relevant to that concern? I disagree with the Florida government if they want to open everything May 1 or whatever.

The studies I've seen on the Great Depression are all over the place, but one consistent theme running through them is that malnutrition led to increased deaths from heart issues. And suicides happened, and other types of deaths were decreased, etc. I don't want to get into the nuances of debating the Great Depression though, because that's really not the issue here. I was just using it as an example.

Recent examples are far better in most ways - the economic impact wasn't as severe in more recent downturns obviously -- because we have better data gathering, the economy more closely models the modern one, etc. Things are likely to be far worse now simply because of how society has advanced. Modern medicine keeps people alive longer in so many different ways; the overall death rate at early ages is far less than it used to be, people live longer, etc. We are also more dependent on the global economy, and so on.

Take the 2008 'great recession'. It is estimated that 10k extra suicides can be traced to that, worldwide (Oxford). That's tragic, but a relative drop in the bucket. However, the Imperial College - you know, same highly-respected researchers that produced the model saying we could have 4M deaths if we did nothing on coronavirus and got things moving in a lot of ways? They estimate that the GR resulted in half a million extra deaths from just cancer alone. In other words, roughly twice as many as died from the worst modern pandemic previous to this, H1N1/swine flu. Then you throw in other causes that would increase as well, and knock-on effects that we haven't yet anticipated, and the fact that this is going to be far worse than the great recession. In some ways, it already has been.

Sustaining life in the modern world at the standard of living we have grown accustomed to relies absolutely on the global economy running smoothly. The main point isn't to quibble over how many people will die because of it, other than to appreciate that the answer is a lot. Not just a few here and there. The cost in human lives is going to be huge, no matter what we do. The only thing we can do is try to find the best balance point for the least damage - there remains no good option.

So um, is it going to be #2 Cause of Death-level suicide we're talking about?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlo...g-cause-death/

(fwiw WaPo articles pertaining to virus coverage are not behind their paywall)

How are the numbers* going to compare to gun deaths, which some camps also seem to give very little care to?


* (the delta; Suicide as it's own category is probably greater than gun deaths, though there's kind of some overlap there)

Is "we have to continue COVID mitigation efforts and plan for a new economic reality" OK?

Where's the line where we can know someone is sincere?

Just saw a Charles Schwab commercial on CNBC on the pandemic. Schwab himself was talking and thought it was tastefully done. He mentioned polio epidemic so looked it up.

Polio epidemics were a reoccurring thing until early 50's when the vaccine was developed ... so at least from 1916 to early 50's. I wonder if the concern in the early days were same as now and they eventually accepted the new-normal.

History of polio - Wikipedia

I think that there are three 20th century inventions that changed the world so fundamentally that it is hard for us to really understand what society was like before then:

(1) Antibiotics
(2) The transistor
(3) The birth control pill

You read these history books set in the 1800s, and people had 10 kids, and 3 of them died of diseases in childhood that we would cure today with one trip to the pediatrician. And that was how it was. And I literally cannot imagine what that was like. Even when I try, I just can't.

I'd add air conditioning.

That is why it was a side note to the rest of this post. It was actually separate from my explanation of why I am leery of the reopening of Florida.

That is why I specifically said I am not making any accusations so as to not to make a blanket statement. That is specifically why I said I hope the concern for these issues continue after the lock down is over.

It is acknowledgement that the concern for the issues are higher than they usually are. I would like to see this level of concern be maintained after the lock downs are over.

It’s not just poverty that leads to it, it is the change in state. In my own family, my grandfather had a suicide attempt when he was going through a bankruptcy in the late 80s due to a bad business venture. My parents went through issues with alcohol dependency due to similar circumstances. That said, my family has also had issues with depression which magnify these issues.

Had a high school friend whose parents divorced because her father was having issues at work, he developed a gambling problem, which led to bankruptcy, alcoholism, etc.

Are these isolated circumstances? Sure, no argument, but two were within my family, and another in the family of a close friend. But the study for the numbers is more than looking at mental issues of those in poverty or well off, it is confined to those going through that change of state which is different and what leads to the fear that leads to the issue.

This is also something I never understood with my mom. She grew up extremely poor, and even going through a bankruptcy was still in much better shape than she was when growing up so what was the issue? But she was always waiting for the other shoe to drop where I am always thankful for what I have.

For realz? There are between 40-50k suicides per year in the US. Even an increase of 25% (Which would be a statistical outlier) would be a drop in the bucket. Nearly 40k have died of Covid-19 in a month and it may be underreported. Let's actually stop and think about numbers, we are of course, on a football sim board.

New cases look to be much lower than trend today, with deaths high again, above 2,500.

Well damn. I guess my BIL isn't worthless afterall.

Should ask him for a stock tip.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...ls-may-follow/

Could just be Trump slowing testing down so we can ‘connect deaths to it. He is obviously trying to manipulate things to make it look like things are calming down when in fact deaths are now going up nationally. I am wondering if we hit 60k by May1?

It’s more than just suicides, you have addiction and other factors playing a role. In my case above, only one of the four mentioned attempted suicide. The other 3 had issues with addiction. Also, one of my grandmothers had depression, but she had that before their change in circumstances. This is limited and anecdotal, but it is why I am sensitive to the issue.

Also, I do not disagree with what we have done on this front, with quarantining, etc. However, in different areas we will be getting to the point where the benefit of the quarantine is outweighed by the economic impact. It might be next week, it might be 3 weeks, but there will be a point where the economic and societal impact is greater than the benefit.

One of the items I have been watching closely is the number of meat processing plants being closed due to the virus. How long before that begins to impact the amount of meat we see in grocery stores? I do not worry as much about vegetable plants because workers are not as densely packed as in meat plants and thus less susceptible to a virus outbreak.

Thinking about going to Kroger/Publix for first time in 2+ weeks. I'll have a mask and will practice social distancing.

It occurred to me as part of the "transition period" these stores (and like) should make available real-time info on how many customers are in the store at any given time.

Piggy backing, just coming back from Costco because of this (and our local supplier of cows does not have on ready for slaughter), and our. Costco was pretty limited in selection. There was some ground beef, a couple of roasts, and tenderloins. I picked up one of the last two ribeye roasts. There was some lamb and quite a bit of pork. I saw no chicken at all outside of 5e frozen section.

At first plant closures were not a big deal because of excess capacity and diversion to other plants, but as more plants close we are losing that flexibility.

We may hit it by next weekend at this rate.

It's pretty obvious with context for most when you can know their motivation. This board is having the most civil discussion of anywhere I've seen on the internet, no joke. I don't think anybody here is necessarily insincere. But I do think this idea that a prolonged economic downturn will make for more deaths than a quick conversion to what is essentially a herd immunity strategy is incorrect.

Agree with this 100%. It's getting ugly out there.

Yeah, in just about every board out there there is either so much vitriol that no discussion can take place or it's an echo chamber because having diverse opinions is banned.

These are very very tough questions. Trying to minimize sickness while keeping people's livelihoods afloat is incredibly hard. But most of us can agree that we should focus on health and economic well being.

Then there are these fuckers:

Jacksonville Beach reopened 26 minutes ago. This is a live picture. pic.twitter.com/tC6voQ3BAn

— Travis Akers (@travisakers) April 17, 2020

Married to a Vegan who plans all the meals, does all the grocery shopping and makes all the food. This doesn't stress me out one bit.

He had a nice little joke downthread:

Don’t worry folks. It’s just the Jacksonville Jaguars on the beach.

We know they can’t catch or pass anything.
— Travis Akers (@travisakers) April 18, 2020

SI

LOL thats flipping awesome.

THIS^^^


Thank you butter for putting this far more politely than I can. The people screaming at the storm about economic issues are not looking at this from a big picture angle, they have one focus, money and little else.

No. I kinda get it.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness is an old American mantra

Well, we may have the first right now, but a lot of people are missing the other two. It goes back to 9/11 and "If we hide, the terrorists will have already won".

Just that this isn't terrorism we're facing. It's a virus. It doesn't care whether we hide, or who we pray to. It just wants to spread.

I knew a girl like this once.

BA-DUM-BUM.....

People can be looking at the big picture and just come to a different conclusion than we do.

What’s the citation for that? Never saw it before.

A bored mom on Facebook probably

Did Lack of Social Distancing in 1918 Pandemic Cause More Deaths Than WWI?

Yeah the data I am looking at from Europe (one graph on Wikipedia for the UK, for example) show the second wave peaking at the end of October/start of November. Parades would not have started until 11/11, and most show the virus in decline after that (rather than spiking, which you would expect from parades).

That said, we do have the case of the parade in Philly, but again, that was during the war, not after.

I just like how they put it in quotes to make it seem legitimate.

I’m getting aggravated reading sources that claim armistice parades led to the increased spread of the virus when every chart I am finding shows it peaking before armistice day.if the armistice parades were responsible for the spread, the peak should be after 11/11.

Went to Kroger at 8am (7-8am was reserved for the frontline and pre-existing folks). Not a lot of folks there, my guess is 15-20 customers.

Pleasantly surprised. There was plenty of meats (more than a couple weeks ago) and stocked up for a just-in-case-BIL-warning. They removed the limits on eggs and milk. I found regular and bread flour. And to top it off, they had Bounty paper towels and Kroger brand toilet paper that "looked" good vs. el cheapo office brand (but that aisle was still pitiful). No hand sanitizers though (WTF is up with that). Lots of vegetables, fruits & bread.

All Kroger folks were wearing masks except for the cashier and bagging kid. There was a sign that said "please don't spray the keypad".

Don't know if my Sat 8am is typical but it was a good time for a grocery run.

So up till about a week ago, I thought the reason we weren't testing more was a capacity issue. I can't find any good quotes, just a variety of sources vaguely referencing 'WH health officials', but the reporting lately indicates that isn't the case and that we don't even have a good handle on why all the capacity isn't being used.

That's … really depressing, if true. It'd be depressing if we knew why and hadn't fixed it yet at this point, but not even understanding where the gaps are this late in game?

Much of what relative optimism I had went down the drain.

I was talking to a friend in the medical industry last night. She was going on about how the test for this has an error rate of 10%. The test was also dependent upon what the background rate was, meaning in our county of 235,000 people with only 93 cases, the test is useless unless many more people have it due to the margin of error. That made no sense to me at all. It came up because ?I was talking about figuring out a way I could get tested and she had said it was pointless where we live.

She was pissed no one was talking or reporting this because it is substantially higher than tests for other diseases. Also, for illnesses like strep, they can treat and there is no major downside treating a false positive for strep. The other problem is we are making policy decisions based upon lousy tests.

Hmm ... Can't speak to the US (CDC has a different Test than used in most of Europe), but as i understand it from a friend working with Covid Patients it is not that 'our' test is producing that many Errors (and 95% of those are false positives because it is calibrated so sensitively) but that you can simply miss the viral RNA with a swap.* Which is why over here people need 2 comsecutive daily negative tests to be released from hospital and quarantine is 14 days without exception, you don't do a test after 7 and can go out again (because then you needed 2 at least and those are needed elsewhere).

*Which also explains people Testing negative but the positive later re: 're-infection' cases in South Korea.

And in a way she is right. PCR Tests only make sense if you use them targeted. You just can't do an unlimited amount and test everybody as ressources are limited: You need people doing them, PPE for those, labs to work them and chemicals to process them (which are finite and need to be produced, same as masks).
Doing twice as many tests does not help if results take twice as long or you run out of ressources.

You test people with symptoms and ideally those in contacts with persons that tested positive or care homes with a positive or suspicion due to deaths.
Countries with very limited testing can only test those with pretty clear symptoms (France and UK, Italy/Spain early on) and a portion if healtcare professionals which is why they have 40% positives.
Germany or Austria test with much milder symptoms, many more contacts and healthcare workers. Which is why the rate of positives is under 10%. The more ressources, the more lenient the criteria for testing. But that can not be scaled up infinitely until a good antigen tests comes out.

Yeah, with the scope of the pharmaceutical (and related) Industries there is no way you should not be able to manage more than what Italy, Spain or Germany can manage now per capita rather than less. My guess is that the organisation is the issue ...


Gruesome reports coming out of Ecuador btw, the hardest hit province for the last 6 Weeks had 11k deaths where in previous years they had 3k. And the majority of those in April. The country has 421 official Covid19 deaths.

Ecuador's death rate soars as fears grow over scale of coronavirus crisis | World news | The Guardian

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/w...guayaquil.html

Gives a glimpse at how far off official numbers and the real toll will be and how devastating this thing can be in countries with a fraction of the ressources that we have available (and even here there will be major discrepancies and already there are with deaths outside hospital often not counted).

The major nations need to get their shit together as quickly as possible, because without their help the Rest of the World might be set back to a degree they might not recover from. And in the end this will hurt all of us, too.

From Molson's link:
There is a lot of truth in the above-displayed meme, for instance:

The majority of deaths during the 1918-19 pandemic occurred during the “second wave.”
More people died worldwide during this pandemic (50 to 100 million) than in all of World War I (about 20 million).
The end of WWI and subsequent military parades enabled a resurgence of influenza.
Generally speaking, there was an increase in influenza cases in places where social distancing rules were ignored.

However, the timeline presented in this meme is inaccurate and, contrary to what the text implies, the second wave of this pandemic was not fueled mainly by a lack of social distancing.

Unfortunately this study doesn't follow up with rates since that initial increase. In the county I work in, mental health issues and suicide rates have continued to go up even with the roaring national economy.

Additionally, I cant imagine the number of people who will lose loves ones from the virus will be helpful for mental health.

The total number of covid deaths is not the total number of people affected by the deaths. The people dying are fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, best friends, caretakers, mentors, teachers, etc. Gigantic increases in total deaths will have far greater negative effects than just those people that died

More and more Reports from within the medical community in Germany/Austria that damage to the lungs is significant even in mild cases and it being permanent becomes more and more likely as a possibility as you get further away from the period of illness and imagery of the lungs shows virtually no improvements for many patients with mild to moderate still struggling to 'catch their breath' over a month later.

Added to the growing indication of unusual damage during the illness to heart, kidney and even significant nerve damage including even many mild patients still not recovering their sense if smell/taste weeks after discharge.

I really hope that's just bad news being disproportionately spread and that the long-term effects are not actually that bad for a lot of people.

But if theses reports turn out to be true and the truth becomes known, it would put a real crimp in the plans of those telling us all to just get herd immunity.

Can you link to some reports?

Try lung damage or nerve damage as searchwords to get some articles, then you can take sources you trust :)
but the english language reports are a bit more vague from a quick search i had, clearest i heard it were TV/Radio Interviews over here with doctors. And for what it's worth both a friend i have working with Covid Patients now and another in Radiology are both pretty spooked ... Neither is a scientist, but both make a living judging the state of other peoples lungs ...

Might be that with the good grip on spread and fatalities there is more interest for doctors to concentrate on this over here and german media more kean to do Interviews on it ...