U.S. to close..

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Singularity

It's one thing to tell people we're closing down certain businesses and another to suggest that the air is not safe to breath.

So we are sealing the boarder to prevent the "plague".
Close the schools because of the "plague".
Work from home because contact with your coworkers will give you the "plague".
We expect millions of deaths by year end.

And people are going to be fine.... but reserve a specific type of mask that most have never heard of for medical professionals and people are going to run screaming into the streets?

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

I didn't mean to imply Germany is a monolithic entity. There are factions all around...but we are talking about politics, so what the politicians do is what counts and they still are have a pretty strong Pro-EU stance (though as you indicate the public is starting to push back).



The rest of your comment basically mirrors the article and in normal times, a single central process is more efficient. But as you say, the German state has the right to issue an emergency authorization but apparently for political reasons to bolster the EU, they have chosen to wait.



I have no doubt if Germany gave emergency authorization, Phizer would have started shipping as soon as it was official even if the EU as a whole hadn't approved.

Germany is participating in the EU central buying of the vaccine. It would have to break ranks with the rest of its EU partners. Then there would have been a free for all ( and the possibility of countries with phizer plants passing “ keep it for me “ laws

This assumed phizer made an application to the German medicines board which it did not.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by Singularity

It's one thing to tell people we're closing down certain businesses and another to suggest that the air is not safe to breath.

Otherwise I suggest that empathy for the medical folks...even in the worst of days....has not prevented people from conducting themselves in a manner that is known to be harmful (where I mean engaging in uselessly risky behavior...e.g. rallies). Too large a percentage of frogs are comfortable with boiling water, no matter who needs to clean up the mess....they get paid anyway, right? It's their job, hospitals are designed to run at maximum capacity, and so-forth.

Who said the air isn’t safe to breath.

The whole point of a mask is that Covid is largely transmitted by aerosol , and that a mask inhibits your aerosol output by trying to confine it.
Your mask ( of the nature the public are wearing ) do nothing to prevent you from infection. They prevent you from infecting others

That message was pounded into people here at the start of mask wearing

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

So we are sealing the boarder to prevent the "plague".
Close the schools because of the "plague".
Work from home because contact with your coworkers will give you the "plague".
We expect millions of deaths by year end.

And people are going to be fine.... but reserve a specific type of mask that most have never heard of for medical professionals and people are going to run screaming into the streets?

Not running into the streets, but something much closer to that and seeking N95s.......than saying "gosh, it's technical, guess I don't need that."

Monkey-see, monkey-do has a much more profound impact on behavior than critical thinking does, at least in crisis-potential situations. People hoard their nuts, that's just the nature of the beast. I can't make people understand this, but this hoarding behavior has profound impacts on microeconomics, macroeconomics in turn, such that policy folks have to consider the effects on commerce, the economy, etc....when considering how much to raise alarm bells.

If you read the pre-Covid pandemic literature....this is the most complicated consideration (raising alarm vs how much)......while the "no N95" decision....I suggest.....wholly was caused by insufficient stockpile management, having nothing to do with aforementioned theory.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Sounds reasonable, but specifically, what?

Was it also like that in say Minnesota, a deep blue state with apparently very well run state government?

We talk a lot in generalities on here, and that's fine for what it is, but what are the specific failures?

btw I grew up just north of MN. They are more "American" than "Scandinavian". But generally nice folks. Ayup

We've heard from others that in many parts of the US, life has been going on at close to normal, with outings, parties, going to restaurants, gatherings, and a significant percentage of people disregarding precautions. I don't know this for a fact, but the same could recently be true of Minnesota? We need to hear from someone on the ground there.

I went looking for some reporting from MN. First interesting link was this from late June - it's mostly a rant about how MN's stay-at-home orders were too stringent. Then I looked at MN stats - case numbers spiked to above 8k a day over the last 2 weeks of November. Minnesota imposed a 4-week "dialback" starting Nov 20, and the daily cases seem to be dropping back starting in early Dec.

So... it seems that they had a lid on it, then relaxed too much going into the fall and into US Thanksgiving, and that bit'em, so they had to go hard again. That's a pretty common story in the US and some other places, no?

[requiem]

I agree the messaging was confused. Personally I attribute much of it to the organizational inertia of switching from normal procedures to contingency options as well as the "fog of war". (Is it aerosolized, or are droplet precautions sufficient? What about surface contact?) For example, say you have a hazard that calls for an n95 respirator; that's the expected certification and anything lower would be considered inappropriate and ineffective.

The idea of wearing a surgical mask instead would be simply dismissed out of hand. Particularly with messaging to the general public; you don't want to start making up things on the fly, so you stick with the current standard. If an improvised mask only filters 30% of particles you don't want someone wearing one and thinking they're now safe. You're also thinking in terms of masks being worn as protection for the wearer, not from the wearer.

But, what happens when you run out of masks? You are then forced to consider questions that many might consider inappropriate before: what's a safe level of re-use? How long is an expired mask really effective? Similarly, what happens when the spread starts getting out of control? If someone infected can wear a surgical mask and that means they only end up infecting 2 people instead of 5 on average, that can make a significant dent in the spread.

This sort of mental shift isn't unusual in a crisis; it will happen at different rates for different people or organizations, and without strong leadership to plan ahead and provide consistent (and future-proofed) messaging will easily create an appearance of chaos and contradiction.

[goboatingnow]

For obvious reasons I haven’t been to the US this year. But have of course been talking to my many friends

While here voluntary compliance with largely voluntary measures has been , which some groups displaying unfortunate behaviour , like teen parties etc , extremely good , I get the impression in the US , that a much larger group of people including what might be termed “ responsible adults “ are habitually ignoring public health advice

The difference seems to be the scale of non compliance

It’s actually a wonder the numbers arnt even higher

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

Who said the air isn’t safe to breath.

The whole point of a mask is that Covid is largely transmitted by aerosol , and that a mask inhibits your aerosol output by trying to confine it.
Your mask ( of the nature the public are wearing ) do nothing to prevent you from infection. They prevent you from infecting others

That message was pounded into people here at the start of mask wearing

I didn't say that the air isn't safe to breath. I'm not trying to be devil's advocate here, but it's important to recognize that at least in the US we have a lot of people who are not so science-y and/or it only takes a small percentage of people to cause a run on things.

I'm not defending the logic, just trying to explain my understanding of CDC's putative position.

Over here the poison control telephones got warm with calls about bleach...you guys got discussions of aerosols.

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

For obvious reasons I haven’t been to the US this year. But have of course been talking to my many friends

While here voluntary compliance with largely voluntary measures has been , which some groups displaying unfortunate behaviour , like teen parties etc , extremely good , I get the impression in the US , that a much larger group of people including what might be termed “ responsible adults “ are habitually ignoring public health advice

The difference seems to be the scale of non compliance

It’s actually a wonder the numbers arnt even higher

^^^^^this. Not just orange guy, but a health system too long playing Wizards of Oz overdiagnosis/over-treating things so that people think we can cure anything, or, with money we can spend our way out of it. Add a CDC and states's public health groups not being meshed, no completely networked health system, inadequate planning... Orange guy was a force multiplier, exacerbating for sure, but we've got other issues.

[requiem]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

We've heard from others that in many parts of the US, life has been going on at close to normal, with outings, parties, going to restaurants, gatherings, and a significant percentage of people disregarding precautions. I don't know this for a fact, but the same could recently be true of Minnesota? We need to hear from someone on the ground there.

The red-blue maps can also be deceiving; the US is really much more purple. Examples (source):





Even though I'm in a "blue" state and region; there are more than enough "red" portions (we've just ordered dozens of refrigerated storage units and thousands of body bags to send down south), and even here many things continue, such as soccer practice in the nearby park, "outdoor dining" in tents, etc. There's also the "rules for thee, but not for me" effect; a recent anecdote I heard was "one of our employees just returned from travel, but we want him to work on this project instead of quarantining as per the requirement; can't he just take a test instead?"

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

Germany is participating in the EU central buying of the vaccine. It would have to break ranks with the rest of its EU partners. Then there would have been a free for all ( and the possibility of countries with phizer plants passing “ keep it for me “ laws

Exactly, rather than break political ranks, they will let the pandemic continue in Germany.

If they were worried about a "free for all", it would have been easy enough to request their portion but start shipping that portion now...not in a few weeks when the EU committees get around to looking at the application.

You yourself agreed that emergency approval is a state by state thing...so it's within the EU framework.

[cyan]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

It was an intentional choice to lie about mask effectiveness. That falls outside of oops, we didn't have a plan and didn't understand.

But if you get caught in a lie, doubling down and refusing to admit it was a lie, only makes people more distrustful. You come out and openly admit you F#%# Up and are trying to make it right.

This was exactly the problem in the US, less so in other countries. The two chief US health officials stated clearly that masks are not effective in February and March. The full Fauci March interview has nothing "alternative" about it. I find it strange that anyone fails to honestly recognize this failure today, as every US official now seems to agree that masks are effective.

Whether a mistake or convenient deception to prevent hoarding, the damage was done to the public trust of a government in a country that has a history of this as fragile in the first place. That is a shame, now that some will need to be convinced to go get the vaccine by that same government that won't admit to the early mistake.

Most Asian countries were already wearing masks while the US was "learning" about face coverings regarding this disease. My relatives in Asia were truly dumbfounded at the time to learn that Americans were being told not to do so. One can only hope that "we" learn from such mistakes.

[Thumbs Up]

More Ivermectin preprint studies just out: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....act_id=3734478
https://www.ejmed.org/index.php/ejme...e/view/599/337
Here is one of the ones from last month:
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-100956/v1

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Singularity

. . . If you read the pre-Covid pandemic literature....this is the most complicated consideration (raising alarm vs how much)......while the "no N95" decision....I suggest.....wholly was caused by insufficient stockpile management, having nothing to do with aforementioned theory.

I agree with this.

But I also agree with Valhalla's objection to lying about the effectiveness of masks in order to protect supply chains. That's no way to build public trust, without which society can't function.

Supply chain management in a crisis is a really difficult job in a world which works on the basis of just in time supply. The advantages of just in time supply are so profound that it is almost impossible for modern society to function without it. But we will have to spend money on accumulating strategic reserves of the kinds of supplies which tend to run out in this kind of crisis, if we want to manage the next one better.

Finland, and Russia -- both countries perhaps still working under the influence of the horrors of the last war -- keep actual warehouses full of PPE, for just such an occurence, behind barbed wire fences and guarded by soldiers. Prepper nations. Doesn't seem so stupid right now, does it.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by S/V Illusion

Facts matter. Even in California.
Those ‘do nothing’ models actually predicted 2 to 3 MILLION deaths. What we experienced is 90% reduction by doing what we’ve done. Not great but not bad either by comparison.

That's correct. You're referring to the Imperial College study from March.


However it does not follow logically that "what we've done" has reduced deaths by 90%. You would have to assume that the model was correct. The model was obviously not correct, because it predicted millions of deaths even with strict measures.