COVID-19: People on the internet are judging me for going outside. It used to be the reverse.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > COVID-19: People on the internet are judging me for going outside. It used to be the reverse.

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freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

poll plane variant posted:

You want me to literally come up with a covid-resistant planned economy in full? I'm just pointing out that stuff like the Oreo factory has been open throughout with people dropping dead of covid left and right. Almost everything but like bars, indoor dining, and the most easily-wfhed offices was considered essential.

VitalSigns posted:

Seems weird to me that we're now insisting workplaces can't be safer than they were already when we had workers getting fired for organizing and demanding PPE and even some managers making a betting pool on how many of their unprotected chicken processors would drop dead on the job

"New Zealand abandoned COVID-zero because they weren't doing lockdown properly. See, here's some poo poo that happened in America to prove it."

edit - here are the cygnets at my local park which are the only animals I get to see after four months and counting of hard lockdown

freebooter fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Oct 6, 2021

# ? Oct 6, 2021 05:30

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# ? May 23, 2024 18:18

Smeef: Aug 15, 2003; I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!; Pillbug

HK has contained Covid pretty well, and we've basically never shut things down at any point in the pandemic despite an extremely dense, ancient population and an economy completely dependent on international trade. The policies have been far from perfect, but here's what I think has worked.

First and foremost, people took it seriously and were responsible. I'm sure the reasons for this were complex, and for the sake of brevity I won't share my guesses for why. In practice, people have worn masks and socially distanced from the start. However, I don't want to overstate it, either. People were still out and about, eating at restaurants and shopping. They were wearing surgical masks, not going all-out bubble boy. Malls, restaurants, and public transportation are frequently packed like sardines, as they always are. Large events were banned, but baseline street crowding in HK is like the equivalent of a major sporting event letting out anyway.

Second, detection and tracking has been good. This has helped people be more responsible. We've had basically live maps of positive cases, where they occurred, which buildings they live in, etc., since very early on. This has demonstrated to people how close they are to cases, and I believe has motivated people to be even more careful when there has been a case close to them. This has been less relevant in 2021, though, when there have been very few cases period.

Third, border control has been pretty good. I say pretty good, because gaps in it have also been responsible for almost all of the waves. Only residents are allowed to enter. Initially, the policy was home quarantine, honor system for 14 days. That was increased to home quarantine with a tracking bracelet for 14 days. Later it was changed to designated hotel quarantine facilities for 7-21 days, depending on origin country, regardless of vaccination status. For most it's 21 days. Testing for entry has gone from none, to test on arrival, to test before departing and on arrival, to ~8 PCR tests (pre and post arrival). Most countries will not be able to control their borders as easily as HK can, though.

The gaps in border control have all been related to privilege and marginalization. Privileged groups have gotten to bypass quarantine at times, causing outbreaks. Marginalized groups slipped past quarantine as times, causing outbreaks. Some, but not all, of the loopholes have been closed. There haven't been any related outbreaks in a very long time.

I am not as certain about the role that quarantine camps (different from designated hotel quarantine facilities) played during the major (tiny by world standards) waves. My impression is that they helped some, but I don't think they were used in the first 1-2 waves. Also, the capacity is quite small, so they would not work if there was a truly big outbreak.

I think that we've gone a little overboard on entry quarantine requirements and 'ambush' quarantines (I don't like the term, but I'll use it for lack of a better one). 21 days and 8 PCRs for fully vaccinated arrivals seems excessive and more about discouraging travel than preventing cases. If that's the goal, then fine, but that should be the stated goal instead of claiming that cases are slipping through multiple PCRs and 14 days of quarantine when that has never been documented to have happened. The ambush quarantines are brutal, too. A single case in a building means the entire building gets shipped off. Buildings here are loving enormous and can house many hundreds if not thousands of people. Quarantine camps are abominable and have caused outbreaks and other health issues. I think these approaches are excessive because I've seen no evidence that previously lighter policies led to cases. As mentioned, the outbreaks were due to loopholes that would not have been closed by longer days and were solved without 'ambush' quarantines.

Here's where I think HK has done poorly:

Vaccination has been downright shameful. Something like 10% of people over 80 have been vaccinated. The reasons are probably quite different from anti-vaxxers elsewhere in the world, but I won't get into that. The media has really stoked fears of vaccines. The government has done little to encourage uptake and has often times taken actions that create further disincentives. Unfortunately the commitment to a 'Zero Covid' strategy has gone a little overboard, too, and authorities have made statements suggesting that people don't need to get vaccines because HK has zero Covid. Regardless of your views on Zero Covid strategies, etc., it is absurd to believe that HK can maintain zero cases forever.

Testing. While entry tests are extreme, once you're out of quarantine, you'll probably never be tested again. There are plenty of community testing centers and mobile testing options, all free, etc., but no one is going to test when there is the risk of being sent to a quarantine camp. It's also just hard to keep people testing when cases are nil. Maybe this isn't that big of an issue, but I can also imagine it becoming an issue when Delta inevitably breaks through.

Quarantine facilities themselves are horrific. This is true for both the camps and designated hotels, unless you are rich as gently caress and can pay $1000 a night to stay at a luxury designated hotel. The camps are Hurricane Katrina FEMA unit caliber. Many of the hotels are micro rooms that haven't been extensively cleaned in months, with a single window that doesn't open and disgusting food. In ordinary times these are places people would stay for 1-2 nights on a layover or something, and spend all their time outside. The most recent case in HK, which was months ago, was caused by transmission within a quarantine facility. I read that recently a man in quarantine nearly died from an allergic reaction to the extensive mold in his room. Not only is this avoidable, because HK is rich enough to do better, but it also undermines other policies. People are not going to cooperate when it might mean 21 days in a facility that has been accurately described as worse than the prison cells in HK.

Smeef fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Oct 6, 2021

# ? Oct 6, 2021 05:40

-Blackadder-: Jan 2, 2007; Game....Blouses.

freebooter posted:

What do you think happened in Australia and New Zealand?

It is hilarious to me that rather than actually read and learn about how and why lockdowns stopped working when Delta arose in real-world COVID jurisdictions, this thread is full of Americans wargaming the perfect pizza delivery scenario that Solves Covid.

Love this. Literally the most on brand thing about the U.S. I've seen in a while.

Trump could've made the Coronavirus his dissent crushing/approval rating skyrocketing 9/11 and sailed into a second term so easily if he'd put even the smallest amount of effort in.

World's only global superpower baby! Woo!

-Blackadder- fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Oct 6, 2021

# ? Oct 6, 2021 05:49

droll: Jan 9, 2020; by Azathoth

poll plane variant posted:

20th C style total war economy where healthcare is the war industry and the virus is the enemy. Extremely limited production and sale of consumer goods, no civilian construction, no new cars, strict rationing of a limited variety of foods, run up a maintenance backlog on infrastructure for the duration, no flashy packaging, etc.

The flour-sack clothes and roofs patched with cooking oil containers economy.

Why does the USA and rest of Capitalist world need to do this when China didn�t?

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ? Oct 6, 2021 05:52

Mr Luxury Yacht: Apr 16, 2012

droll posted:

Why does the USA and rest of Capitalist world need to do this when China didn’t?

Or more importantly like, there's a bunch of places with higher vaccination rates and moderate restrictions that manage to have R0's below 1 and didn't need to do something as insane as "shut down everything except power, water, and what's needed to give every citizen exactly 2000 calories a day of a flavourless corn mush", so maybe try that first?

# ? Oct 6, 2021 05:57

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

VitalSigns posted:

yeah what's wrong with this, why would it be bad if we had more jobs and each worker only had to spend half the time working that they do now for the same pay.

I don't get the objection here. Like you object that workers spend too much time working and are exposed for too long and thus lockdown is unfair, but you don't want them to spend less time working either?

Why is 8 hours the magic number to you, if 8 hour shifts are better than 4 in your mind, are 12 hour shifts better still?

I don't know who you're confusing me with or whose arguments you're mixing mine up with, but it's got nothing to do with the number of hours.

On one page you're preaching about how we need to reduce the number of workers leaving their homes as much as possible in order to reduce the chances for disease transmission, and on the next page you're insisting that we need to double the number of workers leaving their homes.

The contradiction should be pretty obvious.

# ? Oct 6, 2021 07:03

Tayter Swift: Nov 18, 2002; Pillbug

poll plane variant posted:

20th C style total war economy where healthcare is the war industry and the virus is the enemy. Extremely limited production and sale of consumer goods, no civilian construction, no new cars, strict rationing of a limited variety of foods, run up a maintenance backlog on infrastructure for the duration, no flashy packaging, etc.

The flour-sack clothes and roofs patched with cooking oil containers economy.

Out of curiosity, what is the "duration" here.

# ? Oct 6, 2021 07:57

CeeJee: Dec 4, 2001; Oven Wrangler

Tayter Swift posted:

Out of curiosity, what is the "duration" here.

And how big will the internment camps be for those who refuse to comply ?

# ? Oct 6, 2021 08:12

Slow News Day: Jul 4, 2007

CeeJee posted:

And how big will the internment camps be for those who refuse to comply ?

Comrade, please, you were told to use the term �re-education camp�.

# ? Oct 6, 2021 08:22

Fritz the Horse: Dec 26, 2019; ... of course!

Smeef posted:

HK has contained Covid pretty well, and we've basically never shut things down at any point in the pandemic despite an extremely dense, ancient population and an economy completely dependent on international trade. The policies have been far from perfect, but here's what I think has worked.

First and foremost, people took it seriously and were responsible. I'm sure the reasons for this were complex, and for the sake of brevity I won't share my guesses for why. In practice, people have worn masks and socially distanced from the start. However, I don't want to overstate it, either. People were still out and about, eating at restaurants and shopping. They were wearing surgical masks, not going all-out bubble boy. Malls, restaurants, and public transportation are frequently packed like sardines, as they always are. Large events were banned, but baseline street crowding in HK is like the equivalent of a major sporting event letting out anyway.

Second, detection and tracking has been good. This has helped people be more responsible. We've had basically live maps of positive cases, where they occurred, which buildings they live in, etc., since very early on. This has demonstrated to people how close they are to cases, and I believe has motivated people to be even more careful when there has been a case close to them. This has been less relevant in 2021, though, when there have been very few cases period.

Third, border control has been pretty good. I say pretty good, because gaps in it have also been responsible for almost all of the waves. Only residents are allowed to enter. Initially, the policy was home quarantine, honor system for 14 days. That was increased to home quarantine with a tracking bracelet for 14 days. Later it was changed to designated hotel quarantine facilities for 7-21 days, depending on origin country, regardless of vaccination status. For most it's 21 days. Testing for entry has gone from none, to test on arrival, to test before departing and on arrival, to ~8 PCR tests (pre and post arrival). Most countries will not be able to control their borders as easily as HK can, though.

The gaps in border control have all been related to privilege and marginalization. Privileged groups have gotten to bypass quarantine at times, causing outbreaks. Marginalized groups slipped past quarantine as times, causing outbreaks. Some, but not all, of the loopholes have been closed. There haven't been any related outbreaks in a very long time.

I am not as certain about the role that quarantine camps (different from designated hotel quarantine facilities) played during the major (tiny by world standards) waves. My impression is that they helped some, but I don't think they were used in the first 1-2 waves. Also, the capacity is quite small, so they would not work if there was a truly big outbreak.

I think that we've gone a little overboard on entry quarantine requirements and 'ambush' quarantines (I don't like the term, but I'll use it for lack of a better one). 21 days and 8 PCRs for fully vaccinated arrivals seems excessive and more about discouraging travel than preventing cases. If that's the goal, then fine, but that should be the stated goal instead of claiming that cases are slipping through multiple PCRs and 14 days of quarantine when that has never been documented to have happened. The ambush quarantines are brutal, too. A single case in a building means the entire building gets shipped off. Buildings here are loving enormous and can house many hundreds if not thousands of people. Quarantine camps are abominable and have caused outbreaks and other health issues. I think these approaches are excessive because I've seen no evidence that previously lighter policies led to cases. As mentioned, the outbreaks were due to loopholes that would not have been closed by longer days and were solved without 'ambush' quarantines.

Here's where I think HK has done poorly:

Vaccination has been downright shameful. Something like 10% of people over 80 have been vaccinated. The reasons are probably quite different from anti-vaxxers elsewhere in the world, but I won't get into that. The media has really stoked fears of vaccines. The government has done little to encourage uptake and has often times taken actions that create further disincentives. Unfortunately the commitment to a 'Zero Covid' strategy has gone a little overboard, too, and authorities have made statements suggesting that people don't need to get vaccines because HK has zero Covid. Regardless of your views on Zero Covid strategies, etc., it is absurd to believe that HK can maintain zero cases forever.

Testing. While entry tests are extreme, once you're out of quarantine, you'll probably never be tested again. There are plenty of community testing centers and mobile testing options, all free, etc., but no one is going to test when there is the risk of being sent to a quarantine camp. It's also just hard to keep people testing when cases are nil. Maybe this isn't that big of an issue, but I can also imagine it becoming an issue when Delta inevitably breaks through.

Quarantine facilities themselves are horrific. This is true for both the camps and designated hotels, unless you are rich as gently caress and can pay $1000 a night to stay at a luxury designated hotel. The camps are Hurricane Katrina FEMA unit caliber. Many of the hotels are micro rooms that haven't been extensively cleaned in months, with a single window that doesn't open and disgusting food. In ordinary times these are places people would stay for 1-2 nights on a layover or something, and spend all their time outside. The most recent case in HK, which was months ago, was caused by transmission within a quarantine facility. I read that recently a man in quarantine nearly died from an allergic reaction to the extensive mold in his room. Not only is this avoidable, because HK is rich enough to do better, but it also undermines other policies. People are not going to cooperate when it might mean 21 days in a facility that has been accurately described as worse than the prison cells in HK.

just wanna say i appreciate the effortpost describing your situation in HK, I also appreciate our Kiwi and Australian posters contributing specifics from their own experiences

The on-the-ground facts of COVID response (or lack thereof) and the related political, social, and economic factors are going to vary wildly depending on where you are. I'm on a Native American reservation; the situation here is pretty unique but I hope it might provide some insight when I post about it. Some of that might be applicable to other locales, much won't be.

Response to the pandemic is very different between nations and certainly also within nations.

Personally I find it more valuable to talk about how things have unfolded in the real world in various places and what has/hasn't worked rather than engage in endless circular masturbatory speculation about what a perfect lockdown would be.

The real world pandemic loving sucks, I'm sure we can all agree. Humans are fallible. poo poo's complicated.

# ? Oct 6, 2021 08:24

VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

Main Paineframe posted:

I don't know who you're confusing me with or whose arguments you're mixing mine up with, but it's got nothing to do with the number of hours.

On one page you're preaching about how we need to reduce the number of workers leaving their homes as much as possible in order to reduce the chances for disease transmission, and on the next page you're insisting that we need to double the number of workers leaving their homes.

The contradiction should be pretty obvious.

Not really, unless you think traveling to work is where the bulk of work-related COVID transmission happens. Doesn't seem likely but maybe you've seen data I haven't.

And if it is you could arrange shorter hours a different way, pizza guys could work 2 8-hour days a week instead of 5, then the number of them leaving their homes on any given day would be the same

It seems like you're not really thinking your comments through, just trying to find any way you can to score some kind of 'dunk', maybe take a break

VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 11:03 on Oct 6, 2021

# ? Oct 6, 2021 11:01

enki42: Jun 11, 2001; #ATMLIVESMATTER

Put this Nazi-lover on ignore immediately!

VitalSigns posted:

Not really, unless you think traveling to work is where the bulk of work-related COVID transmission happens. Doesn't seem likely but maybe you've seen data I haven't.

And if it is you could arrange shorter hours a different way, pizza guys could work 2 8-hour days a week instead of 5, then the number of them leaving their homes on any given day would be the same

It seems like you're not really thinking your comments through, just trying to find any way you can to score some kind of 'dunk', maybe take a break

The original argument that started this all was about how we can't realistically expect pizza delivery drivers to work 8 hours and then hole themselves up in a room waiting for their next shift. Whether they work 4, 8, or 12 hours is irrelevant to the argument, the 8 hours isn't the important part, it's the fact that pizza drivers are human beings who will interact with people, maybe ignore restrictions, and contribute to spread. Honestly, the fact that they're a pizza driver is mostly irrelevant as well.

The overall point is, without enforcement mechanisms that aren't going to work in North America (and probably elsewhere but I'm less familiar with their history with policing and legal systems), designing the perfect contactless economy doesn't really get you to zero, because non-compliance is going to maintain a base level of transmission. I agree with you in that it doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make workplaces safer, but it's not going to be enough on it's own.

The only way to really get around that is to increase enforcement, which might not even be practical at the scale you need, and is probably going to have a ton of unintended consequences (take one guess who gets the brunt of enforcement when you leave it up to the police). People in this thread have talked about community enforcement, but that doesn't work when you have pockets of a community that don't want to enforce things at all, and is the same category of "redesign the entire economy and COVID is solved, bing bong so simple" that launching an entirely parallel police force nation-wide isn't a straightforward thing to do at all.

# ? Oct 6, 2021 11:47

VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

enki42 posted:

The original argument that started this all was about how we can't realistically expect pizza delivery drivers to work 8 hours and then hole themselves up in a room waiting for their next shift. Whether they work 4, 8, or 12 hours is irrelevant to the argument, the 8 hours isn't the important part, it's the fact that pizza drivers are human beings who will interact with people, maybe ignore restrictions, and contribute to spread. Honestly, the fact that they're a pizza driver is mostly irrelevant as well.

No, OOCC's original objection to lockdown (which my shorter-hours comment was a reply to) is that lockdown is unfair to essential workers somehow because they still have to go to work 40 hours a week while everyone else collects UBI or does work from home and that sucks for them. I pointed out that there's no reason we can't hire twice the pizza delivery guys and have them all work 20 hours a week for more pay, there's no reason everything has to suck for workers at the bottom, that's just a deliberate choice we've made as a society and we could choose otherwise.

What you're saying here doesn't really make any sense, because insisting that an intervention has to reduce risk to absolute zero to be worth doing is irrational. Interventions are all about reducing interactions to get R0 below a critical threshold, not about making risk zero in every conceivable situation. In order to knock down R0 you want to implement lots of interactions that add up, not insist it's either one silver bullet or nothing. You want vaccines to reduce infections, you want masks to reduce transmissions, you want to cut down on as much interaction as possible to reduce opportunities for transmission. Your reasoning here is just like the bad reasoning of the anti-mask anti-vax crowd ("if you can still get infected with a vaccine it's pointless, if you can still infect someone wearing a mask they're pointless, if you can still get infected at the grocery store then closing down bars is pointless", etc.) Lockdowns have been very successful in countries that actually did them for real, the difference in cases and deaths between countries that did it and countries that didn't make that clear. It just isn't the case that because it's possible a pizza delivery guy might get infected that therefore lockdowns do nothing.

# ? Oct 6, 2021 11:59

Ynglaur: Oct 9, 2013; The Malta Conference, anyone?

Does someone have the latest false negative rate for a nasal swab COVID test?

# ? Oct 6, 2021 12:05

wisconsingreg: Jan 13, 2019

Fritz the Horse posted:

How would you enforce full compliance with lockdowns? Massive expansion of police/security forces and of state surveillance?

Is that something you'd honestly advocate for?

Are you like a libertarian or something? Do you pay taxes?

# ? Oct 6, 2021 12:39

wisconsingreg: Jan 13, 2019

Mr Luxury Yacht posted:

Or more importantly like, there's a bunch of places with higher vaccination rates and moderate restrictions that manage to have R0's below 1 and didn't need to do something as insane as "shut down everything except power, water, and what's needed to give every citizen exactly 2000 calories a day of a flavourless corn mush", so maybe try that first?

Lmao. Are you actually complaining that not everything can be sriracha flavored in a national emergency that will kill 1 million people?

# ? Oct 6, 2021 12:46

Smeef: Aug 15, 2003; I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!; Pillbug

Vasukhani posted:

Lmao. Are you actually complaining that not everything can be sriracha flavored in a national emergency that will kill 1 million people?

Did you see the OP he was responding to (via several replies in between)?

poll plane variant posted:

20th C style total war economy where healthcare is the war industry and the virus is the enemy. Extremely limited production and sale of consumer goods, no civilian construction, no new cars, strict rationing of a limited variety of foods, run up a maintenance backlog on infrastructure for the duration, no flashy packaging, etc.

The flour-sack clothes and roofs patched with cooking oil containers economy.

I assume it was a joke, but it's getting harder to tell in here.

Regardless, even the strictest and most successful places for stopping Covid outbreaks and preventing new outbreaks have required nothing near the extreme measures that occasionally get suggested here.

# ? Oct 6, 2021 13:15

enki42: Jun 11, 2001; #ATMLIVESMATTER

Put this Nazi-lover on ignore immediately!

VitalSigns posted:

No, OOCC's original objection to lockdown (which my shorter-hours comment was a reply to) is that lockdown is unfair to essential workers somehow because they still have to go to work 40 hours a week while everyone else collects UBI or does work from home and that sucks for them. I pointed out that there's no reason we can't hire twice the pizza delivery guys and have them all work 20 hours a week for more pay, there's no reason everything has to suck for workers at the bottom, that's just a deliberate choice we've made as a society and we could choose otherwise.

I don't think it was so much that it's unfair to essential workers so much as saying that essential workers exist and spread is going to occur in those environments, and assuming that every essential worker is going to be safe and responsible and follow every NPI, etc, is unrealistic. I don't think they're particularly worse at compliance by any means, just that perfect compliance isn't really realistic to assume for an yone.

quote:

What you're saying here doesn't really make any sense, because insisting that an intervention has to reduce risk to absolute zero to be worth doing is irrational. Interventions are all about reducing interactions to get R0 below a critical threshold, not about making risk zero in every conceivable situation. In order to knock down R0 you want to implement lots of interactions that add up, not insist it's either one silver bullet or nothing. You want vaccines to reduce infections, you want masks to reduce transmissions, you want to cut down on as much interaction as possible to reduce opportunities for transmission. Your reasoning here is just like the bad reasoning of the anti-mask anti-vax crowd ("if you can still get infected with a vaccine it's pointless, if you can still infect someone wearing a mask they're pointless, if you can still get infected at the grocery store then closing down bars is pointless", etc.) Lockdowns have been very successful in countries that actually did them for real, the difference in cases and deaths between countries that did it and countries that didn't make that clear. It just isn't the case that because it's possible a pizza delivery guy might get infected that therefore lockdowns do nothing.

Yeah, I don't think we're disagreeing on the need to make workplaces safer, institute NPIs, etc. I've said that pretty consistently, and I don't understand how you're interpreting that as we should abandon all NPIs if we can't make everyone absolutely safe. Probably on NPIs I doubt we have all that different of opinions. Like I don't want to dig through quotes, but I'm pretty positive I've said in this thread that mask mandates are necessary, ideally they should be N95+, capacity limits or non-essential business closures should happen when cases are growing, etc.

Where I think we differ is that I don't think, particularly with Delta, that it's realistic to maintain lockdowns consistently or long enough to continue to do a COVID zero strategy. There's pockets of groups who are going to be difficult to reach (either in terms of vaccination or NPI compliance) and they will both keep case counts above zero and be a contributor to additional waves. But provided you have a mostly compliant population and a willingness to introduce and remove NPIs according to case counts and Rt, you can manage the spread. Different countries have done this to different effectiveness levels, but instituting harsh lockdowns to try and eliminate cases that are occurring among people who aren't following the NPIs anyway is just adding way more lockdown fatigue for no benefit, absent strict enforcement (which is a giant can of worms that's rightly avoided in North America outside of restrictions on businesses).

enki42 fucked around with this message at 13:54 on Oct 6, 2021

# ? Oct 6, 2021 13:52

Mr Luxury Yacht: Apr 16, 2012

Vasukhani posted:

Lmao. Are you actually complaining that not everything can be sriracha flavored in a national emergency that will kill 1 million people?

No? But as others have said:

Smeef posted:

Regardless, even the strictest and most successful places for stopping Covid outbreaks and preventing new outbreaks have required nothing near the extreme measures that occasionally get suggested here.

And that what some people here seem to be missing when posting from their under construction volcano lairs is that there's a number of places that are showing with higher vaccination rates and moderate NPIs you can get an R0 below 1 without requiring the bizarrely harsh methods some are advocating.

# ? Oct 6, 2021 15:09

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

VitalSigns posted:

Not really, unless you think traveling to work is where the bulk of work-related COVID transmission happens. Doesn't seem likely but maybe you've seen data I haven't.

And if it is you could arrange shorter hours a different way, pizza guys could work 2 8-hour days a week instead of 5, then the number of them leaving their homes on any given day would be the same

It seems like you're not really thinking your comments through, just trying to find any way you can to score some kind of 'dunk', maybe take a break

I thought you were complaining that "physically being at work" was a COVID transmission venue, and therefore we want to reduce the number of people going to work? Except now you're calling for an increase in the number of people physically going to work.

No matter how you shuffle around the shifts, it doesn't change the fact that this means more than twice as many people physically visiting the pizza restaurant. If you're so dedicated to cutting worker hours, even at the cost of more people leaving their homes and traveling to physical workplaces to work, why not just get rid of the pizza delivery boys altogether and let everyone go to the pizza restaurant themselves? Then the delivery workers don't have to work any hours at all!

# ? Oct 6, 2021 15:11

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Ynglaur posted:

Does someone have the latest false negative rate for a nasal swab COVID test?

This depends on the specific test and a number of other factors.

# ? Oct 6, 2021 15:11

VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

enki42 posted:

Where I think we differ is that I don't think, particularly with Delta, that it's realistic to maintain lockdowns consistently or long enough to continue to do a COVID zero strategy. There's pockets of groups who are going to be difficult to reach (either in terms of vaccination or NPI compliance) and they will both keep case counts above zero and be a contributor to additional waves. But provided you have a mostly compliant population and a willingness to introduce and remove NPIs according to case counts and Rt, you can manage the spread. Different countries have done this to different effectiveness levels, but instituting harsh lockdowns to try and eliminate cases that are occurring among people who aren't following the NPIs anyway is just adding way more lockdown fatigue for no benefit, absent strict enforcement (which is a giant can of worms that's rightly avoided in North America outside of restrictions on businesses).

I haven't heard a plausible alternative though.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that once you get 'too many' delta cases then getting R0 below 1 is 'too hard' and takes 'too long' and we should just give up on that and focus on keeping hospitals from filling up.

But this doesn't make any sense because if you let cases keep increasing and increasing until hospitals are almost full and go "oh poo poo ok now we're going to do something about those case numbers", you're in the same boat as you were before. Because the only way to do something about case numbers is to get R0 below 1 and keep it there, which is now even harder and less fun and more boringer than a hard long boring lockdown would be at the beginning.

Which is why what you want to do has failed everywhere that tried it, every country that tried to manage hospitalization without locking down too much ended up having massive cases and massive deaths and spending more time in lockdown than the countries that pursued zero covid in the first place. Or just gave up like the US and Brazil did and accepted truly staggering amounts of death.

The golden mean fallacy that we can give up on the R0<1 threshold and maybe everything will work out or we can get around to it later if it gets 'really serious' is based on wishful thinking that has always collapsed in the face of reality, you can't half-rear end it and have a remotely acceptable outcome. The 1% wants to convince you we can because interventions hurt short-term profits, but in reality they're just cool with massive death and are offering only rationalizations to let people believe it won't happen until it's too late.

Covid is a mindless virus, you can't rules-lawyer it or bargain with it or embarrass it or shame it, it isn't going to 'cut you some slack' just because we're bored of interventions, it's not going to check ICU availability and say "oh poo poo I'll back off so you can have an easier time", reality just doesn't work that way. It will be just as hard to reduce cases when ICUs are full as when they are nearly empty if not harder, with massively more illness and death along the way. I don't like it either but that's the reality.

VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Oct 6, 2021

# ? Oct 6, 2021 15:19

Castaign: Apr 4, 2011; And now I knew that while my body sat safe in the cheerful little church, he had been hunting my soul in the Court of the Dragon.

Discendo Vox posted:

This depends on the specific test and a number of other factors.

For BinaxNOW (the common US antigen test) the likelihood of a false negative is high:

Compared with real-time RT-PCR testing, the BinaxNOW antigen test had a sensitivity of 64.2% for specimens from symptomatic persons and 35.8% for specimens from asymptomatic persons, with near 100% specificity in specimens from both groups.

From https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7003e3.htm

So, generally speaking, a positive test result means you almost certainly have Covid. A negative test result doesn't provide much certainty, especially if you are asymptomatic.

# ? Oct 6, 2021 15:23

VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

Main Paineframe posted:

I thought you were complaining that "physically being at work" was a COVID transmission venue, and therefore we want to reduce the number of people going to work? Except now you're calling for an increase in the number of people physically going to work.

Are you trolling me.

Exposure is a function of man-hours in exposed conditions, not the total number of people.

If I work 8 hours today and you work 8 hours tomorrow, that's the same total work exposure as if I work 8 hours today and 8 hours tomorrow and you stay home both days.

I know you're smart, so I don't understand why you're failing this badly at thinking your way through this, I think you're just grasping at straws trying to find a dunk without really working through what it is you're arguing or what you want besides winning the conversation.

# ? Oct 6, 2021 15:26

enki42: Jun 11, 2001; #ATMLIVESMATTER

Put this Nazi-lover on ignore immediately!

VitalSigns posted:

Are you trolling me.

Exposure is a function of man-hours in exposed conditions, not the total number of people.

If I work 8 hours today and you work 8 hours tomorrow, that's the same total work exposure as if I work 8 hours today and 8 hours tomorrow and you stay home both days.

I know you're smart, so I don't understand why you're failing this badly at thinking your way through this, I think you're just grasping at straws trying to find a dunk without really working through what it is you're arguing or what you want besides winning the conversation.

Well, one person can't get 2 infections at the same time though, so having double the amount of people has the capability to result in more infections. At low enough levels of transmission this is negligible, but if (as an over the top thought experiment) you had a 100% chance to catch covid after an hour of working in a pizza place, 2 people working 4 hour shifts would result in 2 cases and 1 person working an 8 hour shift would result in 1 case.

enki42 fucked around with this message at 15:40 on Oct 6, 2021

# ? Oct 6, 2021 15:33

enki42: Jun 11, 2001; #ATMLIVESMATTER

Put this Nazi-lover on ignore immediately!

VitalSigns posted:

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that once you get 'too many' delta cases then getting R0 below 1 is 'too hard' and takes 'too long' and we should just give up on that and focus on keeping hospitals from filling up.

Maybe that's the disconnect, I'm not saying it's necessarily due to "too many" cases (outside of maybe getting beyond the threshold where effective contact tracing is possible and you have compliance with contact tracing), it's that due to people's behaviour, varying levels of vaccination and compliance with NPIs, etc. you're going to have a baseline level of transmission basically no matter what unless your compliance is perfect.

quote:

But this doesn't make any sense because if you let cases keep increasing and increasing until hospitals are almost full and go "oh poo poo ok now we're going to do something about those case numbers", you're in the same boat as you were before. Because the only way to do something about case numbers is to get R0 below 1 and keep it there, which is now even harder and less fun and more boringer than a hard long boring lockdown would be at the beginning.

Yeah, like I said before, you should always try to get Rt to below 1. I think the only difference we're arguing at this point is that at a low enough level of cases (where you're basically dealing with non-compliant / unvaccinated populations), it gets really, really hard to keep that going, and strengthening lockdowns on the vaccinated, compliant population isn't going to help anything.

The only real difference between our arguments that I can see is that I think targeting zero cases is unrealistic with Delta and targeting based on trying to keep Rt below 1 makes more sense. If you do that perfectly, sure yes you will eventually have zero cases, I just think it's impossible to do that perfectly enough. Rt will eventually get to at / above 1 when you're left with non-compliant populations who you can't really control, even if you don't loosen your lockdowns (because Rt was ALWAYS at / above 1 for that group)

# ? Oct 6, 2021 15:39

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

VitalSigns posted:

Are you trolling me.

Exposure is a function of man-hours in exposed conditions, not the total number of people.

If I work 8 hours today and you work 8 hours tomorrow, that's the same total work exposure as if I work 8 hours today and 8 hours tomorrow and you stay home both days.

I know you're smart, so I don't understand why you're failing this badly at thinking your way through this, I think you're just grasping at straws trying to find a dunk without really working through what it is you're arguing or what you want besides winning the conversation.

The number of people exposed (and the number of people they're exposed to) is loving important, way more important than whether they spent eight hours or sixteen hours exposed. How the gently caress have you been in COVID threads all this time and not know that!?

# ? Oct 6, 2021 15:40

VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

enki42 posted:

Well, one person can't get 2 infections though, so having double the amount of people has the capability to result in more infections. At low enough levels of transmission this is negligible, but if (as an over the top thought experiment) you had a 100% chance to catch covid after an hour of working in a pizza place, 2 people working 4 hour shifts would result in 2 cases and 1 person working an 8 hour shift would result in 1 case.

Main Paineframe posted:

The number of people exposed (and the number of people they're exposed to) is loving important, way more important than whether they spent eight hours or sixteen hours exposed. How the gently caress have you been in COVID threads all this time and not know that!?

That doesn't really affect R0, because most infections aren't people getting infected a second time. At the point that already-infected people are reducing your infections then you've already infected huge numbers of people.

If someone goes to work and gets infected on Tuesday, it's not 'safer' if they go back Wednesday and Thursday and Friday since they can't get any more infected, it's less safe because they can spread it! If a worker gets sick you have to replace them with someone else anyway, you obviously can't go "oh well they're already sick so they can't get more sick" :cmon:

# ? Oct 6, 2021 15:41

Insanite: Aug 30, 2005

FYI if you have any Ellume kits sitting around:

https://twitter.com/EmilyAnthes/status/1445471090906566665?s=20

# ? Oct 6, 2021 15:43

enki42: Jun 11, 2001; #ATMLIVESMATTER

Put this Nazi-lover on ignore immediately!

VitalSigns posted:

That doesn't really affect R0, because most infections aren't people getting infected a second time. At the point that already-infected people are reducing your infections then you've already infected huge numbers of people.

It does affect your transmission rate precisely because most infections aren't people getting infected a second time. The more people you have working high-risk jobs, the more potential cases you can have from those jobs. In any case, this is all academic anyway since like I said, the actual risk to going to a high risk job is nowhere near 100% chance of catching covid every hour, so in the end it's a pretty small factor.

The overall point is while high risk people working 4 vs 8 hours is a good thing in and of itself (provided they're not economically impacted), it doesn't have much to do with COVID transmission, and if anything, more people working shorter shifts could have a very minor effect that would increase the number of cases.

enki42 fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Oct 6, 2021

# ? Oct 6, 2021 15:45

VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

I don't understand what confusion of ideas is leading you guys to make this glaring error.

You're saying that a 20 hour week is bad because if I go to work on Monday and get infected and you go on Tuesday and get infected then that's twice as many people infected as if I go on Monday and Tuesday and get infected both days.

But this doesn't make any sense because if I get infected on Monday and test positive I can't go back to work on Tuesday so someone has to cover for me anyway and get infected on Tuesday.

And it makes even less sense because there's not a 100% chance you get infected every day. If there's a 1% chance I get infected on any given day, then if I go two days there's a 1-(0.99*0.99) =98% chance I get infected one of those days.

If I go today and you go tomorrow there's a 98% chance one of us gets infected, it's the same. I guess there's a 0.0001% chance we both get infected but come on how significant is that. I mean, do you think we should fire half the workers and make everyone work 80 hours a week to cover that infinitesimal chance, no that's stupid, there are much more effective things we can do than that.

E: ok I see the problem I never said 20 hour weeks would reduce transmissions I said it would be less lovely for essential workers. MP claimed it would make the pandemic worse, but that's just wrong, the effect is negligible

VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Oct 6, 2021

# ? Oct 6, 2021 15:52

Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

This is all in basically the same spot it was yesterday evening, let's drop the theorycrafting and R0 analysis for some actual stories from people who went through real life lockdown and we can respond to those instead. Smeef did this just upthread but I know we've got a few posters here from places that had honest to god lockdowns and it feels that would add a lot more than rehashing the arguments of a couple hours ago.

Insanite posted:

FYI if you have any Ellume kits sitting around:

https://twitter.com/EmilyAnthes/status/1445471090906566665?s=20

I'd never heard of this one before, I guess the DoD bought it largely for itself here

# ? Oct 6, 2021 16:03

wisconsingreg: Jan 13, 2019

Mr Luxury Yacht posted:

No? But as others have said:

And that what some people here seem to be missing when posting from their under construction volcano lairs is that there's a number of places that are showing with higher vaccination rates and moderate NPIs you can get an R0 below 1 without requiring the bizarrely harsh methods some are advocating.

But this is after vaccination deployment. After a massive quantity of people have died. If we did a real lockdown, a genuine "cannot leave your home or you are physically coerced" COVID would not even be a thing. We had the strategic reserves to do it. The only place that did that was select parts of China. It was extremely effective.

wisconsingreg fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Oct 6, 2021

# ? Oct 6, 2021 16:14

Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

Vasukhani posted:

Are you like a libertarian or something? Do you pay taxes?

Also stuff like this specifically - if you've got a point to make, just make it

# ? Oct 6, 2021 16:14

Ynglaur: Oct 9, 2013; The Malta Conference, anyone?

Discendo Vox posted:

This depends on the specific test and a number of other factors.

Castaign posted:

For BinaxNOW (the common US antigen test) the likelihood of a false negative is high:

Compared with real-time RT-PCR testing, the BinaxNOW antigen test had a sensitivity of 64.2% for specimens from symptomatic persons and 35.8% for specimens from asymptomatic persons, with near 100% specificity in specimens from both groups.

From https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7003e3.htm

So, generally speaking, a positive test result means you almost certainly have Covid. A negative test result doesn't provide much certainty, especially if you are asymptomatic.

Thanks. I'm know little enough about the science and math of detection tests that I realize what seems to be a simple question probably has a lot of complexity and nuance in any answer. Even knowing that, "Yes, false negatives are a statistically significant thing" is helpful. For context, I have a family member in my house who tested positive yesterday, whereas I and another person in my house tested negative. I've mild cold symptoms for the past 24 hours or so (headache, runny nose, tired). Everyone in my house is vaccinated.

I think I'll probably get another test tomorrow or Friday morning if symptoms persist, and stay away from people until I do (and get back results).

# ? Oct 6, 2021 16:27

Smeef: Aug 15, 2003; I posted my food for USPOL Thanksgiving!; Pillbug

Vasukhani posted:

But this is after vaccination deployment. After a massive quantity of people have died. If we did a real lockdown, a genuine "cannot leave your home or you are physically coerced" COVID would not even be a thing. We had the strategic reserves to do it. The only place that did that was select parts of China. It was extremely effective.

This is false. As I explained not that long ago in this thread, Hong Kong never had a "real lockdown" and has effectively managed Covid from the very start (and sadly still does not have high vaccination rates). As far as I know, Taiwan never had strict lockdowns either despite being one of the first places with a case.

The sad truth is that it doesn't even seem to take extreme measures to control Covid. But it does take a few measures, well implemented, and with the cooperation of society. I suspect it also doesn't work if you've already let 'er rip.

# ? Oct 6, 2021 16:48

Mr Luxury Yacht: Apr 16, 2012

Vasukhani posted:

But this is after vaccination deployment. After a massive quantity of people have died. If we did a real lockdown, a genuine "cannot leave your home or you are physically coerced" COVID would not even be a thing. We had the strategic reserves to do it. The only place that did that was select parts of China. It was extremely effective.

We're talking about how to drop transmission and the R0 now though so level of vaccination is extremely relevant.

In good news:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/federal-vaccine-mandate-1.6201528

No more air travel for the unvaccinated in Canada as of the end of the month. The rail ban only applies to federally regulated passenger rail (so Via Rail). Shame, if the provinces were on board and it applied to like the GO Train, that would prod the crazy suburb holdouts into getting a shot.

# ? Oct 6, 2021 16:50

VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

Smeef posted:

This is false. As I explained not that long ago in this thread, Hong Kong never had a "real lockdown" and has effectively managed Covid from the very start (and sadly still does not have high vaccination rates). As far as I know, Taiwan never had strict lockdowns either despite being one of the first places with a case.

The sad truth is that it doesn't even seem to take extreme measures to control Covid. But it does take a few measures, well implemented, and with the cooperation of society. I suspect it also doesn't work if you've already let 'er rip.

Yeah it's really frustrating, because with the vaccine having something like 80-90% effectiveness even against delta, in theory we should be able to reach zero covid with much lighter interventions than were necessary last year, but it seems the powers that be decided the vaccine was an excuse to let her rip, and now 2000 Americans died again yesterday, a 9/11 every 18 hours.

And we all just have to pray that the uncontrolled spread doesn't select for a ligma variant that can evade the vaccine

# ? Oct 6, 2021 17:02

Doctor Butts: May 21, 2002

One of the places I work as is mandating we're all vaccinated by December. That's awesome. I was vaccinated as soon as I was allowed.

However, to confirm vaccination, they're making us use this Clear app. Does anyone know a lot about this or have had to do it? It seems Clear is mostly use for TSA pre-check but still I really don't want to give my biometric information to some third party. They also need emails, government id, and things like that. I'd really rather just show them my vax card.

# ? Oct 6, 2021 17:07

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# ? May 23, 2024 18:18

Epic High Five: Jun 5, 2004

Doctor Butts posted:

One of the places I work as is mandating we're all vaccinated by December. That's awesome. I was vaccinated as soon as I was allowed.

However, to confirm vaccination, they're making us use this Clear app. Does anyone know a lot about this or have had to do it? It seems Clear is mostly use for TSA pre-check but still I really don't want to give my biometric information to some third party. They also need emails, government id, and things like that. I'd really rather just show them my vax card.

That's really weird, have they said explicitly that just showing them the card or the confirmation emails isn't enough or is this just what they're pushing? It's not like any database it could be connected to could possibly be complete or reliable in the states at least

# ? Oct 6, 2021 17:09

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > COVID-19: People on the internet are judging me for going outside. It used to be the reverse.

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