Covid-19, Part VII - Staying On Topic...

[Plus Plus]

Some anecdotal stuff to share in this thread:

On 7/18, my sister in law went to a wedding where people were not socially distancing (other than her and my brother in law) and very few people were wearing masks. On 7/20, a receptionist at my wife's workplace was out with a fever and on 7/28 the people at her office were informed that this person had tested positive for COVID. As we were going on a family reunion trip on 7/25, my wife, SiL and BiL all decided to get COVID tested prior to the vacation (we were sharing a house with my in-laws, both of whom are over 60).

My SiL and BiL got their tests on 7/21, with 5-10 days for results. I called every testing location in Indianapolis to find somewhere with quick results (CVS advertises 6-10 days, several other clinics advertise 5-7 days) and ended up finding one that had "results within 72 hours." My wife had her test on 7/22 at 9:30am, with the hope that we would get a negative test on 7/25 while we were en route.

We ended up hearing back from our testing location on 7/26 around 5pm. They said that they were delayed due to a wifi outage and that the 72 hours did not include the day of the test (this is not stated anywhere on their website or testing information). My BiL and SiL did not receive their results by the time the vacation ended on 8/1.

Long story short, testing is a mess. What's even the point of getting a test proactively if you are going to find out that 10 days ago you didn't test positive?

Also, I saw my first in-person no-mask rage situation at a restaurant in Michigan. A man was pulling up the constitution on his phone to find mask exemptions and was asking for the police to be called. It was astoundingly pathetic, in part because the mask requirement is lifted once you get to your table. You could put a garbage bag on your head for the 20 seconds it takes to walk to a table and sit down.

With the current state of testing and mask requirements, I don't know what a path forward even looks like. Starting over with a national approach seems like the only answer right now, and it's so late in the game to do something like this.

[BernieCarbo]

Just curious- why even bother going to weddings and family reunions and stuff like that?

[RedTeamGo!]

Just curious- why even bother going to weddings and family reunions and stuff like that?

Open bar, dude

[Boston Red]

Just curious- why even bother going to weddings and family reunions and stuff like that?

To see friends and family.

[Boston Red]

Open bar, dude

This would be a good enough reason, of course.

[BernieCarbo]

To see friends and family.

OK, I just assumed we were supposed to put off traveling and gatherings for the time being. I mean, people can do whatever they want, but what did he expect?

[Plus Plus]

Just curious- why even bother going to weddings and family reunions and stuff like that?

I can't speak for the wedding part, but the family reunion is an annual event where we stay at my in-laws lakehouse (they live in town and are in the small subset of people that we interact with) and other interactions this year were socially distanced (staying on our boat while talking to people on another boat). We went out and about once or twice and all people that we were with wore masks and socially distanced as possible. It's as training-wheels of a vacation as there can be.

[Plus Plus]

OK, I just assumed we were supposed to put off traveling and gatherings for the time being. I mean, people can do whatever they want, but what did he expect?

I don't really understand what your question is - my statement was more of a general complaint about how testing takes an insane amount of time given that you can get a flu test done in 10 minutes at a doctor's office, and a curiosity-comment about a mask rager seen in the wild.

[Boston Red]

OK, I just assumed we were supposed to put off traveling and gatherings for the time being.

Most people I know are taking/have taken summer vacations to somewhere this year. A lot more mountains/lake/wilderness trips this year and a lot fewer beaches/cities/amusement parks. Much driving and little flying.

[BernieCarbo]

Most people I know are taking/have taken summer vacations to somewhere this year. A lot more mountains/lake/wilderness trips this year and a lot fewer beaches/cities/amusement parks. Much driving and little flying.

Sure, going hiking or camping would make a lot of sense this year. Anything that involves gatherings just isn’t worth the hassle.

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I don't really understand what your question is - my statement was more of a general complaint about how testing takes an insane amount of time given that you can get a flu test done in 10 minutes at a doctor's office, and a curiosity-comment about a mask rager seen in the wild.

Mask rager?

[Plus Plus]

Sure, going hiking or camping would make a lot of sense this year. Anything that involves gatherings just isn’t worth the hassle.

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Mask rager?

Also, I saw my first in-person no-mask rage situation at a restaurant in Michigan. A man was pulling up the constitution on his phone to find mask exemptions and was asking for the police to be called. It was astoundingly pathetic, in part because the mask requirement is lifted once you get to your table. You could put a garbage bag on your head for the 20 seconds it takes to walk to a table and sit down.

[BernieCarbo]

OK, I thought you meant me. I’m about as far from a rager as you can possibly get.

[Roy Tucker]

I’m just pissed because over the last 5 years, we’ve put on 3 separate 250 person weddings. And that’s planning, funding, conducting, and clean up. They are massive efforts. And we were invited to 7 weddings that were supposed to happen and I was looking forward to drinking someone else’s booze and eating their food and kicking back. They’ve all been rescheduled for Sept-Dec and I’m not sure they are going to happen still.

[BuckeyeRed27]

I’m just pissed because over the last 5 years, we’ve put on 3 separate 250 person weddings. And that’s planning, funding, conducting, and clean up. They are massive efforts. And we were invited to 7 weddings that were supposed to happen and I was looking forward to drinking someone else’s booze and eating their food and kicking back. They’ve all been rescheduled for Sept-Dec and I’m not sure they are going to happen still.

I think I posted a couple months back, but I was supposed to get married 2 weeks ago and we postponed it. I know some people are still trying to do them right now, but the restrictions and planning were awful back then and our venue ended up not even being open, so wouldn't have been able to do it anyway.

We ended up going to a lake house with two other couples to hang out for a few days. We did all get COVID tested beforehand, and our experience was good. Did the Rite Aid drive thru test, set up the appointment 2 days ahead of time and got the results back via email 48 hours after the test.

[LeDoux]

There is no logic connection between the fact that people will listen to a doctor or any authority figure no matter what is ordered, and the validity of the advice of doctors. Zero connection. In fact, one could argue that people accept the advice of doctors because historically, doctors have been exceptionally reliable with their advice.

But if you don’t trust doctors, you don’t have to. Doctors and disease experts rarely give their own opinion, they just provide the results of their research with the most logical conclusions sometimes attached. Anyone who is searching for the truth can simply examine the research, which is alway given with excruciating detail, and judge for themselves. Any simpleton can reject out of hand what they find inconvenient.

Look at the actual data. It is overwhelming and convincing to anyone with an open mind. The most convincing data is the comparison of regions that mandated masks and regions that didn’t. The numbers are clear. The former has significantly lower Covid cases and deaths than the latter. By a large margin. There are many more research projects that reveal the same evidence. There are zero that reveal the opposite. As I said, the evidence is overwhelming.

You can deny it if you want, but doing so puts you in the same group as the climate change deniers or the flat earth society.

I agree with much of what you posted here. I do not quite understand the point you making about the disconnect between the validity medical advice and obedience to authority. I think Milgram would agree that they are separate and suggests that, in a better world, they would not be.

As far as trusting doctors, can we answer that categorically? Some doctors combine excellent interpersonal skills with tremendous skill and vast knowledge base- true healers. Others.... not so much. Whether or not I trust a doctor depends on the doctor in question. But I do perhaps disagree that the typical doctor is much of a researcher. M.D.s are more appliers of science than researchers. Not always, but usually. I do harbor some suspicious about doctors who climb administrate ladders. Not because they they are doctors, but because they are ladder climbers with the "white coat" protections suggested by Milgram (and many others.)

Now to the data. He is where I think much of the disagreement starts. Scientists look at data sets differently than almost everyone else. Scientists do not except data as valid until it has been properly scrutinized. You mentioned something along these lines in your post. And there are huge problems with how covid data has been collected. The biggest issue, is that covid deaths are are determined by many different doctors interpreting and applying guidelines differently. You add in a huge financial incentive to check the covid19 box as a cause of death and you have, at the very least, a tainted data set. The numbers posted are almost certainly inflated. How inflated? I don't know. But I think it quite reasonable and prudent to take the reported numbers with a grain of salt.

One of my biggest gripes is the incongruence between policies. If you recall, back in January or February the CDC announced that containment was impossible. That is, they conceded that this disease would circulate through the population. That is when the official policy became "flatten the curve." As the disease made its way through the population we didn't want medical resources to be overwhelmed. Given this, the most relevant "statistic" is available hospital capacity. Instead the media/officials focused death count. More recently in is newly reported cases. These are not the primary numbers to track once you have conceded containment is impossible. This will move through. People will die. We will all die someday. Maybe you are not concerned about this bait and switch. I defiantly am. New case numbers rise for many reasons. One of the major factors in the increase cases is the increased availability of testing. But really, again, new cases is not the most relevant variable here.

I think you have me down as "anti-science." I assure that I am not. I am a scientist. Not in the medical field, but a scientist. I love science and it pains me to see it bastardized to the degree it has been. The amount of fraud in some of the sciences is staggering. I can point you to some sobering sources if you are interested. But once you add the troubles in the sciences to a charged political atmosphere... watch out!

As to the mandate state versus non-mandate state, I never looked at it. If you have some citations I can try and track them down. But I know before I see the numbers that there are a tremendous amount of confounds that can explain the disparity if it exists. Mask-mandates are certainly a plausible hypothesis, but so are political, cultural, reporting, climate, etc. etc. differences. You will need to forgive me if I am not initially overwhelmed by the evidence. Maybe you are right, I still return to the fact containment has a strategy was abandoned last winter. We are prolonging the agony no reason. Instead of isolating the vulnerable while the rest of us face the inevitable exposure, and subsequently protect them with out herd immunity, we go along with half-measure that protect little and cost volumes. And none of this even addresses the quality of life versus risk debate. There are many factors to consider when making policies. It is a difficult balance. I want a comprehensive discussion about them, not executive orders without debate.

I am going to leave the flat earths and climate change alone. I don't see their relevance to anything else discussed here. And for the record I am a climate change agnostic and am quite skeptical of a flat earth model. But I have never investigated either. I like to hold conclusions until have had a chance to take a prolonged look into it.

So we have some areas of disagreement. I hope we can continue to be civil as we talk about them.