Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[mission27]

58 minutes ago, mistakey said:

bookmarking this guy

You said the same thing mbtl

[mistakey]

4 minutes ago, mission27 said:

You said the same thing mbtl

i said that they were releasing purposefully over pessimistic results?

no, i dont think the CDC is purposefully creating over pessimistic results and then leaking them to the NY times so that the spox can refute it so that they look good 

the president's twitter account may do that but not internal CDC research

I think that like any good statistician knows, prediction is tough and thats why prediction intervals are very wide.  

[mission27]

Just now, mistakey said:

i said that they were releasing purposefully over pessimistic results?

no, i dont think the CDC is purposefully creating over pessimistic results and then leaking them to the NY times so that the spox can refute it so that they look good 

the president's twitter account may do that but not internal CDC research

I think that like any good statistician knows, prediction is tough and thats why prediction intervals are very wide.  

I never said that's how or why they came up with this forecast, there are a million different forecasts

I strongly believe the white house leaked this one because they are  trying to get credit for 'only' 150k deaths or whatever

[Xenos]

7 minutes ago, mission27 said:

Its the stuff he chooses to focus on and the fact that his re-opening phases don't make a ton of sense (e.g. we need to re-open hair salons if we want people to go back to work, period)

I have friends who own hair salons and I understand their plight. But do you understand why hair salons are still risky? Personally, you can still have good hygiene and decent grooming without hair salons.

As it is, certain parts of CA may be stuck in phase 2 for a while.

[mission27]

Just now, Xenos said:

I have friends who own hair salons and I understand their plight. But do you understand why hair salons are still risky? Personally, you can still have good hygiene and decent grooming without hair salons.

As it is, certain parts of CA may be stuck in phase 2 for a while.

I understand why they are risky, but they are essential business for most.  I'm not cutting my own hair.  Some things are far worse than death.

[mission27]

The other issue with the hair salon thing is realistically there is no way to stop it.  People are desperate for haircuts and barbers / hair dressers are desperate to make some money. 

Almost everyone I know has had some kind of licit haircut in the last 2 months and I live in a highly educated blue state with friends who are mostly total ******* about this.  

[naptownskinsfan]

24 minutes ago, Shanedorf said:

yeah, that was a sobering number.
Did they say anything about the number of people facing starvation is during non-covid times ?
They say "an additional 150 M" but I can't remember the typical amount
The US has an incredible network of food supply, other countries aren't in nearly as good of shape and hunger is a part of daily life in some places.

On the other side of the coin, most other countries aren't as centralized and factory-ish on their food processing. Corporate America wiped out many of the regional processors in order to have 1 or 2 immense plants - and maybe that isn't the strategy going forward. It might be more expensive, but it may offer greater flexibility. Right now if one plant gets salmonella, its a major disruption whereas if there were several smaller plants, we can absorb one going on shutdown.
They could literally cycle open and closed for each of many plants, whereas with only a few - that's a bigger challenge.
I hope we learn some valuable lessons on this one, but I kinda doubt it.

Those links could probably help. 

We have extreme redundancies in our supply chain.  We have six different protein suppliers.  Each of them provides one of our high-use products, and 1-2 of our lower use products.  That way, not one company is responsible for one product.  If something happens at one, there are five other companies to pick up the slack.  

Same goes for dairy and some other high-use items.  Hell, even saltine crackers have two suppliers because of that.  

In additional to flexibility and redundancy, it would spread those jobs out, and also help get product out faster.  

[naptownskinsfan]

1 hour ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

Here are some longer remarks:

https://www.wfp.org/news/wfp-chief-warns-hunger-pandemic-covid-19-spreads-statement-un-security-council

 

Interesting that the prospect of re-opening wasn't brought up as an action item here. While they don't show their data, their proposed response to this issue means I think we can infer that was a "nothing is done, absolute worst case scenario" projection. Which is still a very troubling number. 

 

We're 6 weeks into this and the food supply chain seems to be the only thing that absolutely needs to be back to normal ASAP so far. 

I agree on the supply chain.  I also don't know how it is around the rest of the country, but in my area, frozen foods have been decimated by hoarders and preppers.  I've been into the local stores more than once and all of the ice cream is gone, all of the frozen potatoes and breakfast items are gone, almost all of the pizza is gone and frozen vegetables are tapped out.  And if we don't have fresh meats anymore, it wouldn't be long before the other frozen items start taking a hit too.  

[Xenos]

8 minutes ago, mission27 said:

I understand why they are risky, but they are essential business for most.  I'm not cutting my own hair.  Some things are far worse than death.

Are they really essential businesses for people who are not barbers or hair stylist? What about the barbers that are too afraid to open up again?

[naptownskinsfan]

1 hour ago, theJ said:

Ah that's interesting.

That's good supporting data that the lockdown needs to be modified to better target where the real dangers are.

 

Sadly, it seems that, instead of using all of the space in the facilities I mentioned above, states are just locking the doors of nursing homes and letting things run their course.  As I stated a few days ago, there were concerns about doctors having to choose who lives and who dies, but we've essentially said to nursing homes that God will sort it out as we shut the doors.  It's reprehensible to say the least.  

[mistakey]

15 minutes ago, mission27 said:

I never said that's how or why they came up with this forecast, there are a million different forecasts

I strongly believe the white house leaked this one because they are  trying to get credit for 'only' 150k deaths or whatever

[mistakey]

3 minutes ago, naptownskinsfan said:

Sadly, it seems that, instead of using all of the space in the facilities I mentioned above, states are just locking the doors of nursing homes and letting things run their course.  As I stated a few days ago, there were concerns about doctors having to choose who lives and who dies, but we've essentially said to nursing homes that God will sort it out as we shut the doors.  It's reprehensible to say the least.  

i mean, its a tougher problem and more nuanced than that.  my mother in law is a nurse at a memory unit in  nursing home that is doing well.  they cant have visitors in and they are doing well at her particular nursing home, but the one that was more lax that she used to work at has a lot of cases.  almost gotta treat these nursing homes like hermetic containers, cant risk anyone bringing the virus in, cause once its in anywhere enclosed it spreads like wildfire, whether it be a nursing home or a navy ship.  you still cant really bring in anyone from the outside to help cause, what if they cause more damage.  tough situation for sure.  

[mission27]

Just now, Xenos said:

Are they really essential businesses for people who are not barbers or hair stylist? What about the barbers that are too afraid to open up again?

Its more essential than most businesses.  No you wont die but who is going to put up with not getting a haircut for 6 months?  I mean, we have liquor stores open too, because people would riot if they couldn't buy booze.  You have to balance the risk with compelling economic and social desires of your citizens. 

Obviously no business should be forced to open.  That goes without saying.  Private businesses can make that choice on their own, once its allowed again under the law.  My guess is the vast majority will choose to open back up with stuff like masks and temp checks because at some point they want to start making money again and move on with their lives too.  Anyone who doesn't want to risk sitting in a barber chair doesn't have to.

Bottom line though people want to get their haircut.  You can probably convince people not to go to a movie theater for a year, but hair salons need to open at some point.  Like I said yesterday, DARE and abstinence sex ed and prohibition of alcohol didn't work either.  People will violate this rule and you're just being silly at that point because there's no way to enforce it.  Lets focus on the intersection between highest benefit and lowest social cost public health measures and you'll have a much better chance of compliance. 

[naptownskinsfan]

11 minutes ago, Xenos said:

I have friends who own hair salons and I understand their plight. But do you understand why hair salons are still risky? Personally, you can still have good hygiene and decent grooming without hair salons.

As it is, certain parts of CA may be stuck in phase 2 for a while.

In Maryland, they are open if you have a letter saying you are an essential business with a grooming policy, which we do for food safety.  It is my understanding that anyone giving haircuts to anyone else could lose their barber license.  However, if you are going to someones house and cutting their hair under the table, how is anyone going to know?  Now, I don't know of anyone doing this and I would never jeopardize someone's livelihood that way, but no one can tell me with a straight face it isn't happening.  

Since that is most likely the case, let's just open up with restrictions.  Have to wear masks in that close proximity, and they can deny service if not.  Six feet distance minimum between customers and other employees.  Sanitize the seat and get a new smock (or don't have smocks) for the next person.  I would be more than happy to get my hair cut in an old t-shirt and ball it up and put it in a bag to handle when I get home to eliminate the need for the smock. 

That is my issue with not giving some businesses the chance to stay open.  We ordered car washes closed, and that includes the automatic ones at gas stations.  Really?  How does that make any sense?  

[mission27]

3 minutes ago, mistakey said:

As someone who knows a thing or too about leaking stuff to the media...

Anything that gets leaked to the media is done for a reason

Nobody is going to leak something to the media that shows cases progressing exactly at the rate everyone expects them to progress.  You'll have people on one side leaking the Kushner model to make the WH look stupid and people on the other side leaking a model that shows a very high end estimate of potential deaths and rebounds because they think it'll lower expectations and make them look like heroes. 

As usual answer is certainly somewhere in between the two