outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Or, worse, the parents will tell their kid to hide that they have COVID, which will mean mass spread now with hundreds of kids home.

I agree we can't just wait for a vaccine because that could be 4 months (or longer, or never), but the solution shouldn't be stubbornly rushing headfirst into the flames, as FL and GA are.

that's the shit that worries me, if I was 15 I'd be terrified of being known as the kid who got sick and ruined everything

Other than vaccine or zero cases, what's the standard for anything opening, then?

Personally, I have no idea. I think things should be totally, strictly locked down for two weeks. Like, prioritize the illness and treat it with the seriousness it deserves.

I agree, I think if we went into full lockdown in March and stuck to it for 5-6 weeks we'd be in a far, far better position now

like I get that there are no good options right now when it comes to school but that is all because of how poorly we handled this from the start

I agree we can't just wait for a vaccine because that could be 4 months (or longer, or never), but the solution shouldn't be stubbornly rushing headfirst into the flames, as FL and GA are.

― popeye's arse (Neanderthal), Friday, August 7, 2020 12:45 PM (forty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

right but that isn't what's happening in NYS, which is what people seemed to be responding to.

re nyc in person reopening--
seems to me like the teacher's union will not go along with this...
then cuomo gets to demonize the teacher's union, is that the game plan here?

probably. neither cuomo or deblasio are on speaking terms with the union following the school shut down and all the advice and reopening info is a quagmire of impossible answer trees and "we'll let you know about that".
Try to parse this: https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-public-schools-reopening-plan-heres-what-we-know-so-far

Schools, as they normally exist, cram about 28 to 40 humans together into one room for six or more hours a day, alongside dozens of similarly crammed rooms connected by hallways. Periodically all those hundreds of humans leave those rooms and mix freely together in the hallways, just to be sure that everyone is exposed to the maximum numbers of other participants every school day.

Add in one deadly, highly contagious disease that none of the participants are immune to and repeat over and over again until the desired results are achieved.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I'm actually not that concerned about the NYC schools reopening, even as someone married to a teacher. Under current likely plans, schools are opening at like 25-50% capacity, with students given the option of full remote, and at most coming in 1-2 days per week. I think that pictures of insane death cult georgia schools and statistics from the worst parts of the country have created a bit of hysteria and obscured the fact that NY has a very low rate of spread and low rate of disease now. Obviously if that changes I would change my view, but I think we are currently on track for a partial reopen.

yup

right but that isn't what's happening in NYS, which is what people seemed to be responding to.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Friday, August 7, 2020 1:32 PM bookmarkflaglink

ahh, well in my case I'm not referring to NYS. NYS seems to have gotten on the upside of this thing moreso than other states.

The problem they ran into with our specific high school where I am is that there is literally not enough room to spread out. They have 3500 kids, so even at a fraction of capacity there's just no place to put them.

I should say, I'm not particularly hopeful about things even when there is a vaccine. We have vaccines for the flu every year that at most 50% of people take advantage of. We have vaccines for whooping cough, among other highly communicable illnesses, that far too many people blow off for no good reason. Which means that when there is a covid vaccine, assuming we get one, then it will be impossible to make everyone get it it, and if everyone doesn't get it then we're still going to have spreading and outbreaks, possibly/probably on par with what schools might have if they even partially opened today. It's all about how schools and whatnot respond to outbreaks, because if we can't eradicate whooping cough then there is no way we're going to eradicate this.

I feel like people are way more likely to get the COVID vaccine though there are for sure gonna be a lot of right wingers who don't and honestly I can't really bring myself to feel too much concern for them

herd immunity or anything in the neighborhood requires a high adoption rate though

which tbh I don't think we're achieving the former with a vaccine anyway but.....it does hurt the rest of us if those people don't get one too.

it hurts people who actually can't take the vaccine. same thing applies here. https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/flu-shot/

However he is careful to note that during the H1N1 outbreak, they saw "young, healthy people dying all over the place from the flu.” So everyone should get immunized, unless they have a severe chicken or egg allergy, have had a severe reaction to an influenza vaccine, or a history of Guillain-Barré Syndrome, or are under six months of age. These unlucky folks can’t get immunized and will just have to hope that everyone else gets a flu shot, giving them a chance to cash in on some community immunity.

exactly who can't get it will differ, and figuring it out is one of the reasons these trials take a while. but we want everyone who isn't medically prevented from receiving the vaccination otherwise other people will die.

thanks, you said that better than I did

My dad got Guillain-Barre syndrome when I was ten, at the same time that my mom was battling stage iv ovarian cancer.

None of us have gotten a flu shot ever again...I think I've gotten flu once since then.

(They're both still alive, btw).

Worth sitting through, if only for the sheer absurdity. Imagine someone waking up from a 5-month coma and having to explain this:

Yakko Warner sings the nations you can currently travel to from the US without restrictions. pic.twitter.com/3of64izHrO

— Matt Gardner (@wogoat) August 7, 2020

Is this "4'33" or "You Suffer"?

wow Ed. Australia not fuckin around. That’s some April-level lockdown.

Just Victoria at this stage but cases were stubbornly not going down from 300-750 a day. Deaths starting to creep up, especially in private aged care facilities with lots of contract workers and terrible management.

NSW is having sporadic outbreaks, but seemingly containing them through testing, contact tracing and isolation. Schools are open there although several have shut down as cases have been uncovered - sending very family associated with those school into isolation for 2 weeks.

Similarly restaurants and pubs are open under restrictions (table service, limited numbers social distancing and all names taken). A few outbreaks around individual premises but contact tracing and setting up pop up testing in the specific venues seems to be working.

Every other state is more or less returning to normal with travel bans on anyone coming or going to VIC and NSW.

it does feel like a couple more week in lockdown in May could have avoided that. (And if that bored returning traveller in quarantine and the equally bored security guard hadn’t rooted as has been widely alleged)

The lesson from this seems to be that if it gets to a level more than the NSW sporadic outbreaks situation contact tracing becomes really hard and you end up having to lock down

xp re: Yakko - hah, good one. appreciate the dumb amount of effort required to make that happen

looking at how the us handles the situation i ask myself the question. why does a life count so little there? is it still the wild west? does america learn? 2000 deaths per day are 2000 deaths too much. that makes 700,000 per year! i have the feeling that most countries in the world have the crisis better under control than the us. so unbelievably sad.

excuse me, we're in the middle of a battle royale fever dream over here, and you're working against our suspension of disbelief

looking at how the us handles the situation i ask myself the question. why does a life count so little there? is it still the wild west? does america learn? 2000 deaths per day are 2000 deaths too much. that makes 700,000 per year! i have the feeling that most countries in the world have the crisis better under control than the us. so unbelievably sad.

― walking towards the sun since 2007 (alex in mainhattan), Friday, August 7, 2020 3:55 PM (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

You clearly hate freedom

the tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of random victims

Ask not what your country can do for you, ask how many loved ones you can sacrifice for your country. And then dig a little deeper.

Surely we all have a long-lost great uncle we can send to this South Dakota motorcycle festival.

does seem more true than ever to me that this is a nation of gunslingers

we don't have the sense of community that the UK or other nations have. we are only out for ourselves

LOL the UK has sense of a community does it?

I'm constantly reading reports on ILX about mask wearing in the US and thinking, "If you think that's bad, try living in the UK".

No such thing as society since Thatcher

yes, you have to wear a mask to go in a store in Scotland right now and apparently nobody does it lol

America just has more poverty and less healthcare than every other developed country, big part of the issues there

And the UK still has a far higher death rate from COVID than the US, despite Trump.

I saw jakies barely able to walk down Union St in Glasgow and even some of them were wearing masks. The worst places I saw were local village Spar-type shops, where nobody under 25 was wearing a mask. But virtually everyone else was.

The UK is a small and densely populated country with a fucked up relationship to booze which locked down too late and prior to late March had people routinely travelling all over it every weekend. A disproportionate spike was virtually guaranteed under those conditions but once it actually locked down people seemed to take it seriously and mask use is now more common than in Germany. The US appears to have it much worse on almost every level right now.

I reserve the right to change this opinion if the current controlled regional outbreaks turn into a nationwide spike once again obviously.

Saw my first masks for sale in a shop today. Owner wasn't wearing one...

yes, you have to wear a mask to go in a store in Scotland right now and apparently nobody does it lol

Not true. Since it was mandated compliance rates have been generally very high. On my last trip round the huge Tesco near me I only saw 3 people not wearing masks.
Distancing, however, was a joke.

As time goes by and this thing drags on, I've definitely moved from the point where I was in April or May, where I'd be very pleased to go into a store and see most people wearing masks, to now, where I go into a store and get extremely pissed if I see anyone not wearing one. Obviously this is mostly because they're mandatory now in virtually all stores, so if I walk into a grocery store as I did yesterday with signs plastered all over the front saying you can't come in without a mask and then I see a half-dozen people within five minutes not wearing one, it's obvious at that point you are willfully being a dickhead and ought to be shunned out of any decent society. Suffice to say, I said fuck this and left the store and went to my usual spot where everyone masks up.

It's wild, I legit hardly see anyone without masks on in stores. Outside is a different story.

outside, where masks are less important: a great time to try out wearing a mask

inside, where is essential and critical to wear a mask: sheesh this mask is getting uncomfortable, time to take it off

Just been to my local supermarket, still a minority of people not wearing masks and, we keep coming back to it, still staff not wearing masks. Outside, I'd still say the majority aren't wearing masks

Can't wait for Toby Keith's "You Can't Mask My Flag"

I.... don’t wear a mask outside. is that bad? I’m not within 2m of anybody.

I only wear a mask outside when I am around other people. Otherwise I either cross the street or move into the street if I am heading toward someone else, whether or not they have a mask on themselves.