We could stop the pandemic by July 4 if the government took these steps

[homersapien 11,353]

A $74 billion investment in testing, tracing and isolation could rescue the economy — quickly

By Alex Tabarrok and Puja Ahluwalia Ohlhaver 

May 15, 2020 at 10:06 a.m. EDT

With the unemployment rate at its highest level since the Great Depression — 14.7 percent and climbing — many Americans are clamoring to reopen the economy, even if it means that thousands of daily covid-19 deaths become part of the backdrop to life. It’s time to move on as “warriors,” President Trump has said, because “we can’t keep our country closed down for years.” We, too, favor markets and share the president’s eagerness to stop economically ruinous shutdowns. But the choice between saving lives and saving the economy, the latter of which Trump has endorsed implicitly, is a false one.

In fact, framing the issue that way could kill many Americans and kill the economy.

The dangers of reopening without disease control — or a coronavirus vaccine or therapeutic breakthrough — are illustrated by events at the Smithfield Foods meatpacking plant in Sioux Falls, S.D. Smithfield offered workers a bonus if they showed up every day in April. Normally, bonus pay would increase attendance. But in a pandemic, encouraging the sick to haul themselves into work can be disastrous. The plan backfired. Hundreds of Smithfield employees were infected, forcing the plant to shut down for more than three weeks. If we stay the current course, we risk repeating the same mistake across the whole economy.

The economy consists of people who have hopes and fears. As long as they are afraid of a lethal virus, they will avoid restaurants, travel and workplaces. (According to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll last week, only 25 percent of all Americans want to “open businesses and get the economy going again, even if that means more people will get the coronavirus.”) The only way to restore the economy is to earn the confidence of both vulnerable industries and vulnerable people through testing, contact tracing and isolation.

There is already a bipartisan plan to achieve this; we helped write it. The plan relies on frequent testing followed by tracing the contacts of people who test positive (and their contacts) until no new positive cases are found. It also encourages voluntary isolation, at home or in hotel rooms, to prevent further disease spread. Isolated patients would receive a federal stipend, like jurors, to discourage them from returning to workplaces too soon.

But our plan also recognizes that rural towns in Montana should not necessarily have to shut down the way New York City has. To pull off this balancing act, the country should be divided into red, yellow and green zones. The goal is to be a green zone, where fewer than one resident per 36,000 is infected. Here, large gatherings are allowed, and masks aren’t required for those who don’t interact with the elderly or other vulnerable populations. Green zones require a minimum of one test per day for every 10,000 people and a five-person contact tracing team for every 100,000 people. (These are the levels currently maintained in South Korea, which has suppressed covid-19.) Two weeks ago, a modest 1,900 tests a day could have kept 19 million Americans safely in green zones. Today, there are no green zones in the United States.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/we-could-stop-the-pandemic-by-july-4-if-the-government-took-these-steps/2020/05/15/9e527370-954f-11ea-9f5e-56d8239bf9ad_story.html

[I_M4_AU 7,768]

To the title of your thread; I was unaware that testing, tracing and isolation was a cure for the Coronavirus.  I guess by July 4th until the vaccine is available we still hunger down and keep the economy stymied?  Sounds like a plan.

[homersapien 11,353]

36 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

To the title of your thread; I was unaware that testing, tracing and isolation was a cure for the Coronavirus.  I guess by July 4th until the vaccine is available we still hunger down and keep the economy stymied?  Sounds like a plan.

You misunderstood the title.  Stopping (or controlling) the pandemic is not the same as a "cure" for covid 19.

(And it will be a virtual miracle if we have a vaccine by the end of the year.)

Bottom line, what we need to control the pandemic is an extensive (federal) effort to ramp up testing and contact tracing,  as the subtitle clearly states.

[I_M4_AU 7,768]

4 minutes ago, homersapien said:

You misunderstood the title.  Stopping (or controlling) the pandemic is not the same as a "cure" for covid 19.

(And it will be a virtual miracle if we have a vaccine by the end of the year.)

Bottom line, what we need to control the pandemic is an extensive (federal) effort to ramp up testing and contact tracing,  as the subtitle clearly states.

The bottom line is even testing, tracing and isolation will not stop or control the pandemic as it is an impossible task.  Just totally unrealistic even with the fascist governors we have in the US.  It’s nice to dream.

[aubiefifty 16,705]

On 5/16/2020 at 1:04 PM, I_M4_AU said:

To the title of your thread; I was unaware that testing, tracing and isolation was a cure for the Coronavirus.  I guess by July 4th until the vaccine is available we still hunger down and keep the economy stymied?  Sounds like a plan.

lol if you would think for a minute you would realize those steps are part of the road to recovery but we gotta make a bad joke out of the other side bringing a real solution besides trumps open em up and if some die they die.........right?

[homersapien 11,353]

On 5/16/2020 at 2:48 PM, I_M4_AU said:

The bottom line is even testing, tracing and isolation will not stop or control the pandemic as it is an impossible task.  Just totally unrealistic even with the fascist governors we have in the US.  It’s nice to dream.

That's a perfect example of  how many so called "conservatives" have elevated irrational ideology over science:

 

Widespread testing might not work in America. We love our ‘freedom’ too much.

Gun-toting protesters are bad, but broader distrust in government may be worse.

By

Keith Humphreys 

Keith Humphreys is a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University and is an affiliated faculty member at Stanford Law School and the Stanford Neurosciences Institute.

May 14, 2020

Public health professionals are focused on expanding coronavirus infection testing nationwide. “Testing is outbreak control 101, because what testing lets you do is figure out who’s infected and who’s not, and that lets you separate out the infected people from the noninfected people and bring the disease under control,” Harvard professor Ashish Jha says. As Tom Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The Washington Post, “Our ability to get to the new normal depends to a great extent on our ability to test, isolate, contact trace and quarantine.” Public health leaders are essentially unanimous: This is, they believe, America’s most viable escape route from the pandemic. It’s what has largely contained the virus in multiple countries, including Germany, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.

But what works there may not go over well here. Even under the best circumstances, national testing programs pose enormous technical challenges — How many tests? Who makes the tests? Where should they be processed? — that experts are working to solve. But even a technically sound program is useless without widespread consent. And obtaining such consent “would require a major reduction in our liberties and a prolonged period of increased surveillance,” as journalist Stephen Bush points out. Will Americans accept those reductions willingly and quickly enough to implement an effective testing regimen? It’s hard to imagine.

In countries with successful testing programs, the relationship of citizens to the government differs from that of the United States in important respects. According to a 2018 Gallup poll, Germans are almost twice as likely as Americans (59 percent vs. 31 percent) to have confidence in government. This may help explain Germans’ greater willingness to comply with testing regimens and mask-wearing guidelines — and why Germany has almost two-thirds fewer coronavirus deaths per capita than the United States. Consider, in contrast, that data from the Pew Research Center show that only 17 percent of Americans say they trust the federal government to do what is right “just about always” or “most of the time.”

East Asian democracies such as Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan with successful testing programs differ from the United States in having democratized relatively recently. These nations carry what foreign policy expert Hans Kundnani calls an “authoritarian residue,” which promotes compliance with government-imposed coronavirus measures. For example, in the 1970s and 1980s, participation in government monitoring of stool samples was mandatory for South Korean children. Those children are now the adults who comply with the dramatic quarantine restrictions and testing protocols that have given South Korea one of the lowest coronavirus death rates in the world.

Americans’ relative lack of deference to their government extends to matters of health. Of all wealthy democracies, only in the United States have legions of voters fought for decades to prevent a government guarantee of health care for all citizens. Americans and the politicians they elect are also highly protective of personal health information — often with good reason. The app at the heart of Singapore’s coronavirus tracing system records people’s disease status in a fashion that clearly would be illegal under U.S. law. So would the South Korean app that alerts you to the identity of infected people nearby. Clusters of gun-toting protesters opposing public health measures are a real — and uniquely American — problem, but it’s the much more prevalent distrust in government’s role in public health that would curtail the success of any test, trace and isolate program. 

Public health experts should be thinking through what happens when they introduce the programs they’ve devised. What will we do when millions of Americans flatly refuse to be tested for the virus? What should we do if those who test positive deny reality and refuse to change their behavior?  (According to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll, only 58 percent of Americans say they are very or somewhat worried about getting the infection and becoming seriously ill.) What if some governor in a state that refused Medicaid expansion, such as Kristi L. Noem (R) of South Dakota, decides that test, trace and isolate is the next frontier of opposition to big government?

The public health field is underestimating the extent of these challenges. That is probably because virtually everyone in the field thinks that emergencies of this sort should override concerns about individual privacy and autonomy. By its very definition, public health prioritizes an entire population’s well-being, even in cases where it crimps individual liberty (such as taxing cigarettes or supporting mandatory seat belt and vaccination laws). Public health schools conform to the broader academic pattern of leaning left, including in generally viewing expanded government as a means to a better society. It’s public health after all, not private health.  

You don’t have to venture far off campus to see that many Americans do not share this faith in government or willingness to limit individual freedom and privacy for population benefit. That doesn’t mean that efforts to test, trace and isolate won’t be successfully implemented anywhere in the United States. Some towns, cities, counties and states will have enough political assent to suppress virus flare-ups. But the virus knows no borders, in a nation this big and this mobile, so you can’t designate a “no peeing” section in the swimming pool. On balance, we probably will end up something like herd immunity-aspiring, light-touch Sweden, only without the benefit of guaranteed health care. This won’t be because we universally agreed to choose such a policy, but because we couldn’t universally agree — and never have — about fundamental issues surrounding politics and health.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/widespread-testing-might-not-work-in-america-we-love-our-freedom-too-much/2020/05/14/4904d6a4-9556-11ea-9f5e-56d8239bf9ad_story.html

[homersapien 11,353]

Well, I_M4_AU, you certainly seem to have the president you want.

 

Covid testing is about saving lives. Trump thinks it’s just about numbers.

He treats testing statistics as if they were TV ratings or rally-attendance figures.

By Fintan O'Toole 

Fintan O’Toole is a columnist with the Irish Times. His latest book is "The Politics of Pain: Postwar England and the Rise of Nationalism."

May 14, 2020

During a meeting with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R), President Trump paused to muse about the pros and cons of testing people for the coronavirus. “The media likes to point out” that the United States has the most covid-19 cases in the world, he observed. “But we do, by far, the most testing. If we did very little testing, we wouldn’t have the most cases. So, in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad.”

The United States does not do “the most testing,” at least not on a per capita basis — not by a long shot. And if the United States did “very little” testing, that would not change the number of people infected, although it would hamper efforts to reduce that figure and limit our understanding of where the virus is spreading. But Trump’s comment revealed a great deal about how he thinks about testing and about the meaning of numbers.

Tests are perfect, in Trump’s mind, when they tell you what you want to hear — but not so great when they deliver bad news. They are useful if they lead to an impressive statistic. But if a test is going to produce an unwelcome result, why do it? To other people, it may seem obvious: It’s to produce an objective truth about what is happening to Americans. Once we know the scope of the problem in every city and state, we can plan the responses — contain the virus and gradually resume normal life. But for Trump, the purpose of testing is not to establish an objective truth. It is to generate good numbers.

Numbers are crucial to the way Trump sees the world. He cares passionately that people believe his claims that he has billions of dollars. He considered his (partly) abandoned nightly crisis briefings as TV shows whose success should be judged by the only metric for such events that matters to him: ratings. He began his presidency with an insanely obsessive row about how many people attended his inauguration. He understands the economy solely through the vicissitudes of the stock market. According to the book “Fear,” by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward, Trump’s main concern in internal discussions about tax cuts was to have memorable figures: “I like those big round numbers. Ten percent, 20 percent, 25 percent.”

From the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, Trump has been primarily concerned less with protecting lives and more with projecting positive statistics. In early March, he explained his reluctance to let 3,500 passengers, most of them Americans, disembark from the Grand Princess cruise ship anchored near San Francisco: “I would rather [leave them onboard] because I like the numbers being where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship.”

Today, Trump is caught in a contradiction he cannot resolve: He likes the number of tests performed to go higher and higher but refuses to acknowledge the implications of their results. He is the author of a horror story who, when critics complain about how terrible it is, boasts that it has more pages than any novel ever written.

When this contradiction is pointed out to him, he gets irritable. Even by Trump’s standards, his outburst at Weijia Jiang, a White House correspondent for CBS News, at a news conference on Monday, was remarkable. Jiang began by observing that the president had said “many times” that “the U.S. is doing far better than any other country when it comes to tests. “Why does that matter?” she asked. “Why is this a global competition to you if Americans are still losing their lives?” Trump snapped that she should “ask China,” a non sequitur that many people took to be a reference to her Chinese American ethnicity; he soon abandoned the conference.

What was so incendiary about Jiang’s question? The answer surely does not lie in the fact that Trump has consistently distorted the data comparing U.S. testing rates with those elsewhere. In a normal democracy, this would indeed be a sensitive subject. About 25 countries surpass the United States on per capita testing, and many of the countries with which Trump compares the United States have made far more progress in curbing the spread of the virus. Experts say the United States may need 3 million or more tests daily to accomplish similar goals, given its population, but it currently tests one-tenth that number.

 But since when has Trump shown the slightest embarrassment about making false claims? His fury arose from the basic premise of the question: What the reporter was implying was that there is supposed to be a relationship between testing on the one side and reality on the other. Most people might take that relationship for granted. For Trump, it does not compute.

Consider, in this light, his reaction when Katie Miller, Vice President Pence’s press secretary, tested positive for the virus: Trump said the result illustrated why “the whole concept of tests aren’t necessarily great.”

“She was tested very recently and tested negative, and today, I guess, for some reason, she tested positive,” he said. “The tests are perfect, but something can happen between a test, where, it’s good, and then something happens, and then all of a sudden …” He trailed off into silence.

What Trump stopped short of saying is that a “good” test suddenly turns “bad” when it produces the “wrong” result. Tests should be like the people with whom Trump surrounds himself: sycophants who tell him only what he wants to hear. The “whole concept of tests” is not to establish facts about the unfolding crisis. It is to produce an ever-rising graph of figures, similar to TV ratings or stock market returns, that he can point to as totems of his own greatness.

His ambivalence about testing — love the statistics, hate the results — leads him into wild inconsistency. Today he takes credit for the large numbers of tests done nationally (“nearly double the number of any country”), yet only a month ago he said flatly that governors were “responsible for testing” — not Washington. Testing is not useful, Trump suggests, and may even be counterproductive; yet he cites widespread testing as a reason to lift stay-at-home orders.

He has asked Americans to go forward into public life, and the workplace, like “warriors,” even though experts caution that, without more testing and contact tracing, infections will soar. Yet the White House constantly tests its own staff members, and the president and vice president, to try to keep that particular workplace safe.

In a perfect world for Trump, tests would have no results. They would be done not to discover anything about a person, but entirely for their own sake. Whether the subjects were infected would be as irrelevant to his great victory over the virus as the actual numbers in Washington were to his record-breaking inaugural crowd.

But those obstinate tests do have results, and they show a country with 5 percent of the global population having a third of the world’s known cases of covid-19. That outrageously impertinent question — what is the point of the boasting about statistics when you are overseeing a catastrophe? — shatters Trump’s reverie of triumph and brings his tower of ever-ascending numbers tumbling back to Earth.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/covid-testing-is-about-saving-lives-trump-thinks-its-just-about-numbers/2020/05/14/72fa765e-953c-11ea-9f5e-56d8239bf9ad_story.html

 

 

 

[Grumps 3,693]

Can you explain how testing people saves lives?

[homersapien 11,353]

3 minutes ago, Grumps said:

Can you explain how testing people saves lives?

Controlling a pandemic - instead of simply letting it run wild - saves lives by reducing the total number of infections.

Isn't that obvious?

[Grumps 3,693]

1 minute ago, homersapien said:

Controlling a pandemic - instead of simply letting it run wild - saves lives by reducing the total number of infections.

Isn't that obvious?

You didn't answer my question at all, but thanks anyway.

I completely understand how controlling a pandemic and reducing the number of infections saves lives. That was a great answer to a question I didn't ask!

[SaltyTiger 7,763]

5 hours ago, homersapien said:

Controlling a pandemic - instead of simply letting it run wild - saves lives by reducing the total number of infections.

Isn't that obvious?

All we can do at this point is control Brother Homer. Not saying I agree with an economic shutdown but will say I am extremely disappointed with "personal responsibility".  Beaches in our area appeared similar to a "4th of July" this weekend. Afraid we are in for an awakening. 

  

[SocialCircle 570]

Why don’t most other states follow Kemp’s lead. Georgia has re-opened for over 3 weeks now while those at risk of dying with Covid-19 have been told to shelter in place until mid-June. So far the results are good all of the way around. Hospitalizations and deaths per day and the number of cases are all down while testing has increased as has economic activity. I  understand the data might change and if it does Georgia can adjust to the facts on the ground.  Right now Kemp is looking smarter than those experts and others who trashed him for re-opening Georgia when he did. 

 

 

[McLoofus 35,182]

54 minutes ago, SocialCircle said:

Why don’t most other states follow Kemp’s lead. Georgia has re-opened for over 3 weeks now while those at risk of dying with Covid-19 have been told to shelter in place until mid-June. So far the results are good all of the way around. Hospitalizations and deaths per day and the number of cases are all down while testing has increased as has economic activity. I  understand the data might change and if it does Georgia can adjust to the facts on the ground.  Right now Kemp is looking smarter than those experts and others who trashed him for re-opening Georgia when he did. 

Brian Kemp, who said that he just learned carriers could be asymptomatic about two months after every person in the world with internet access already knew that? That Brian Kemp?

You can say his decision ended up being correct if you want. But don't call him smart. He's not. He's lucky. The reason he reopened was because the state couldn't afford to keep paying unemployment, plain and simple. He's not smart. He doubled down on a 16 and drew a 4. We're still waiting for the dealer to turn over his cards.

[SocialCircle 570]

1 hour ago, McLoofus said:

Brian Kemp, who said that he just learned carriers could be asymptomatic about two months after every person in the world with internet access already knew that? That Brian Kemp?

You can say his decision ended up being correct if you want. But don't call him smart. He's not. He's lucky. The reason he reopened was because the state couldn't afford to keep paying unemployment, plain and simple. He's not smart. He doubled down on a 16 and drew a 4. We're still waiting for the dealer to turn over his cards.

Kemp clarified that comment and of course many ignored the clarification including you.  I know Brian Kemp. He had smart people analyze the data for him and made his decision based on all available data. The FACTS so far show he was right in re-opening Georgia while suggesting those in the high risk categories to continue to shelter in place. So far the experts saying not to re-open and Trump were wrong and Kemp was right.  If the data changes, then I'll be the first to say he was wrong.  It has been over 3 weeks now and hospitalizations are way down and deaths per day are down and cases haven't spiked despite the fact we have more testing now than over 3 weeks ago.   Facts will prove whether anyone is right or wrong and NOT opinion.  Right now....the FACTS support Kemp being correct.  

[McLoofus 35,182]

6 minutes ago, SocialCircle said:

Kemp clarified that comment and of course many ignored the clarification including you.  I know Brian Kemp. He had smart people analyze the data for him and made his decision based on all available data. The FACTS so far show he was right in re-opening Georgia while suggesting those in the high risk categories to continue to shelter in place. So far the experts saying not to re-open and Trump were wrong and Kemp was right.  If the data changes, then I'll be the first to say he was wrong.  It has been over 3 weeks now and hospitalizations are way down and deaths per day are down and cases haven't spiked despite the fact we have more testing now than over 3 weeks ago.   Facts will prove whether anyone is right or wrong and NOT opinion.  Right now....the FACTS support Kemp being correct.  

YELLING is OBNOXIOUS. 

KEMP is a DUMBASS.

HOPEFULLY, though, he was RIGHT and a bunch of people won't DIE. 

[SocialCircle 570]

7 minutes ago, McLoofus said:

YELLING is OBNOXIOUS. 

KEMP is a DUMBASS.

HOPEFULLY, though, he was RIGHT and a bunch of people won't DIE. 

In this instance he has been proven by facts so far to be smarter than those experts and Trump who suggested he was re-opening too soon. It seems the stupid ones are some of those who refuse to take action based on the available data and instead seem to be politically motivated. The data is clear now and it comes from all over the world. Those at risk of dying with Covid-19 are older and those with underlying medical conditions. Those with virtually no risk of dying with Covid-19 are all others. If you only look at the data it only makes sense to follow Kemp’s lead in most places. One’s  politics doesn’t change the facts. Most people don’t realize more people in the US in every age group since Feb. 1st have died with pneumonia than have died with Covid-19. Also more people in the US under the age of 25 have died with the flu since Feb. 1st than with Covid-19. This virus is serious for those who are elderly and those with underlying medical conditions, but for almost all others it is no worse than getting the flu and for many others no worse than catching a cold. 

[McLoofus 35,182]

1 minute ago, SocialCircle said:

Those at risk of dying with Covid-19 are older and those with underlying medical conditions. 

Yes, we've all known this since early March at the latest. I think you fail to consider how many people fall under that umbrella, though. Half the country has heart disease alone. 

Also, you really need to quit focusing solely on death statistics. There is a lot of evidence that the virus can cause long-lasting and even permanent respiratory damage.

And, of course, folks such as yourself keep ignoring the medical professionals who overwhelmingly ask that people be far more responsible than they're being, especially since the states are mostly only offering impotent suggestions that are going ignored.

I like what one such health professional suggested in another thread. Y'all that want to just go about your business like there's nothing going on, sure, go for it. Just sign a release waiving any treatment for COVID-19 and have at it. 

[SocialCircle 570]

1 minute ago, McLoofus said:

Yes, we've all known this since early March at the latest. I think you fail to consider how many people fall under that umbrella, though. Half the country has heart disease alone. 

Also, you really need to quit focusing solely on death statistics. There is a lot of evidence that the virus can cause long-lasting and even permanent respiratory damage.

And, of course, folks such as yourself keep ignoring the medical professionals who overwhelmingly ask that people be far more responsible than they're being, especially since the states are mostly only offering impotent suggestions that are going ignored.

I like what one such health professional suggested in another thread. Y'all that want to just go about your business like there's nothing going on, sure, go for it. Just sign a release waiving any treatment for COVID-19 and have at it. 

I’m sure you believe Cuomo to be the smart one and Kemp to be the dumb one despite the facts.

I believe Kemp is exactly right. Those elderly and with underlying medical conditions should shelter in place and all others should re-open with the guidelines suggested. It is what the data clearly tells us and so far the data clearly tells us it is indeed working. 

I’m sure you and others will continue to play politics though and not follow the facts. 
 

BTW there are also no known outbreaks from school openings around the globe. There is growing evidence that perhaps youngsters might not be able to easily infect others with Covid-19. This is per the BBC. 

[McLoofus 35,182]

Just now, SocialCircle said:

I’m sure you believe Cuomo to be the smart one and Kemp to be the dumb one despite the facts.

I believe Kemp is exactly right. Those elderly and with underlying medical conditions should shelter in place and all others should re-open with the guidelines suggested. It is what the data clearly tells us and so far the data clearly tells us it is indeed working. 

I’m sure you and others will continue to play politics though and not follow the facts. 
 

BTW there are also no known outbreaks from school openings around the globe. There is growing evidence that perhaps youngsters might not be able to easily infect others with Covid-19. This is per the BBC. 

You presume to know more than you do, about me and about other things.

Play politics? Just because I called Kemp a dumbass?

 

PS- You repeat yourself constantly, even when your points were already acknowledged. Like a bot that's been fed 3 or 4 talking points. It's weird. 

[SocialCircle 570]

4 minutes ago, McLoofus said:

You presume to know more than you do, about me and about other things.

Play politics? Just because I called Kemp a dumbass?

 

PS- You repeat yourself constantly, even when your points were already acknowledged. Like a bot that's been fed 3 or 4 talking points. It's weird. 

I don't appreciate the personal attacks.  I think facts are well worth repeating. 

[McLoofus 35,182]

Quote

“I would say we’re really concerned,” said State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris in an interview with APR. “The numbers are not headed in the right direction, especially in some parts of the state.”

Harris pointed to the rising number of confirmed cases in Montgomery County and other areas of the state, and the high number of hospitalizations and rising death toll in Mobile County as remaining areas of concern.

Testing has increased across the state, Harris said, which is contributing in part to more positive cases being identified. By Sunday, more than 156,000 people had been tested in Alabama, up from 95,000 on May 1.

 

But the increase in testing, while it may explain rising case counts, does not explain stubbornly high hospitalization numbers and the rising death toll.

Over the last seven days, nearly 2,000 new COVID-19 cases have been confirmed in Alabama. On Thursday alone, the state reported more than 400 new cases for the first time, the largest single-day increase since the state confirmed its first case. Over the last week, seven- and 14-day averages of new reported cases have remained higher than any previous point.

Meanwhile, the percent of tests that are positive has remained relatively stable.

"This disease has not gone away,” Harris said. “We’re not out of the woods. We have got a long way to go.”

As of Sunday afternoon, more than 11,700 people in Alabama have tested positive for the virus. At least 488 have died.

“There are clearly outbreaks that are going on, and we have a lot of concern about that,” Harris said. “Mobile is still seeing a lot of patients. All of those are really worrisome.”

 

https://www.alreporter.com/2020/05/17/alabama-health-officer-numbers-are-not-headed-in-the-right-direction/?fbclid=IwAR19vQtxUdcvGLoCOBhT9-wji8O75dRDp3T7tq_pssxNW1w0nLawFvPy8iE

[McLoofus 35,182]

1 minute ago, SocialCircle said:

I don't appreciate the personal attacks.  I think facts are well worth repeating. 

By all means, please tell me again what my opinion of Cuomo is and how I'm playing politics.

[I_M4_AU 7,768]

22 hours ago, homersapien said:

That's a perfect example of  how many so called "conservatives" have elevated irrational ideology over science

This is an interesting statement. I mentioned that it would be next to impossible to *control* the out brake with the plan of testing, contract tracing and isolation and I can’t believe you are discounting the social science of Human Nature. I guess you believe more in the *exact* science of the medical modeling, that have been wrong more times than not, then the science of human behavior.  

The original shutdown was to flatten the curve to prevent the medical system to become overwhelmed. That has been accomplished and the public knows it.  Now, the narrative is to *move the goal posts* and there is a lot of resistance.  To try to control the population when your original goal has been reached is not going to work.

The following is an article from Nature about Human Behavior During a Pandemic:

One of the central emotional responses during a pandemic is fear. Humans, like other animals, possess a set of defensive systems for combating ecological threats4,5. Negative emotions resulting from threat can be contagious6, and fear can make threats appear more imminent7. A meta-analysis found that targeting fears can be useful in some situations, but not others: appealing to fear leads people to change their behaviour if they feel capable of dealing with the threat, but leads to defensive reactions when they feel helpless to act8. The results suggest that strong fear appeals produce the greatest behaviour change only when people feel a sense of efficacy, whereas strong fear appeals with low-efficacy messages produce the greatest levels of defensive responses.

Another challenge is that people often exhibit an ‘optimism bias’: the belief that bad things are less likely to befall oneself than others. While optimism bias may be useful for avoiding negative emotions9, it can lead people to underestimate their likelihood of contracting a disease10 and to therefore ignore public health warnings11. Communication strategies must strike a balance between breaking through optimism bias without inducing excessive feelings of anxiety and dread.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0884-z

The last sentence is where we are with regard to your testing, contact tracing and isolation.  If we were going to do this, it would have been better to do it at the beginning, like South Korea.   We were not ready for that and you can blast whoever you want about that, but we are where we are, no going back.  The optimism bias has kicked in and any amount of fascist behavior is not going to work for the entire nation.  It just isn’t.

ETA:   Well, I_M4_AU, you certainly seem to have the president you want.  No where did I mention the president in my responses.  Quite using my statements as an excuse for posting anti-Trump propaganda. 

[I_M4_AU 7,768]

20 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

lol if you would think for a minute you would realize those steps are part of the road to recovery but we gotta make a bad joke out of the other side bringing a real solution besides trumps open em up and if some die they die.........right?

You have been really strong about people dying, admonishing fellow posters for even suggesting that dying is a part of life.  What puzzles me is when Gov. Cuomo instituted a LAW that required hospitals to release Covid-19 positive patients back into nursing homes you were silent on the subject. This directly caused untimely deaths. Does this type of actions from elected leaders not bother you?  Are posters on the board more egregious, because of their beliefs, than the actions of Governors that do not respect the sanctity of life and have direct control over policies?  Something doesn’t add up here fifty.

Watch what they do, not what they say.  Like Obama, Cuomo is a smooth talker and people want to believe what he says.  He has mentioned several times no one should die of this virus, yet his policies point in another direction.  He is dangerous for the sanctity of life. 

[SocialCircle 570]

33 minutes ago, McLoofus said:

 

https://www.alreporter.com/2020/05/17/alabama-health-officer-numbers-are-not-headed-in-the-right-direction/?fbclid=IwAR19vQtxUdcvGLoCOBhT9-wji8O75dRDp3T7tq_pssxNW1w0nLawFvPy8iE

As more testing occurs I would expect more cases to be reported. The number of hospitalizations in AL was 1331 on 4/28.  On May 17 the state website reported 1391 hospitalizations because of COVID-19. The data is worth tracking and if the hospitalizations spike too much to where the healthcare system might be overwhelmed then the governor should take action. So far I don’t see a good reason for the governor to change the current guidelines.