Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion

[correcaminos]

Some good news:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/02/cov...-doses-to-us-by-may-sooner-than-expected.html

Now this is good news!

 

[lazyboy97o]

If a single parent is a caretaker of a high-risk person, they would engage in the same protocols (and have access to the same PPE & funding) as a nursing home or hospital worker. The single parent wouldn't need to isolate; neither would those front line workers. However, they would be tested often & would behave as if they are infected when around those high-risk people.

Essentially, they would behave just as medical professionals who care for immune-compromised patients have done for decades. Those folks still went home, went out to eat, went to ballgames. But when they walked through those hospital doors, they were (are) laser like in their attention to hygiene.

In sum, you'd be building protective fences around the high-risk, while doing your best to keep things open. Of course there would still be economic damage. But maybe we only lose 10 million jobs instead of 20, and maybe we only see half the drug addiction and suicides. And maybe we have fewer than 400k+ virus deaths, because we're concentrating our efforts on protecting a targeted, smaller percentage of the population.

You can’t claim a group is isolated when they are consistently having contact with persons who are not isolated. That just doesn’t follow. It’s a bubble full of holes. Other diseases don’t have the level of a- and pre-symptomatic spread which is what allowed doctors to interact with high risk patients, along with using proper protective equipment as necessary. The places that have had the best economic success are those who quickly, decisively and aggressively dealt with the pandemic. That is how you get to have your cake and eat it too.

 

[Disney Experience]

Russian vaccine Sputnik V interim results show 91.6% efficacy from Phase 3 trial conducted in Moscow.

DEFINE_ME

ClinicalTrials.gov

clinicaltrials.gov

 

[techgeek]

Please don't misinterpret - the source of my frustration with how the last 10 months have gone is not borne out of a selfish desire to do as I want. Rather, my frustration comes from the incalculable damage we have done to society in an effort to fight the virus. Was some of it inevitable? Of course. But much of it was unnecessary, and some of it was senseless.

Like you, I have been hurt by seeing what the virus does to people. But I have also been hurt by seeing what the shutdowns have done to people.

Way back at the beginning of this I remember someone saying something like “if we succeed in preventing this from being a catastrophe, we’ll forever be accused of overreacting.”

So now, we’ve failed at preventing a catastrophe, and failed at any sort of nuance in our response, and there’s still going to be blame and pointed fingers for years.

Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t believe there is any population on earth that just ‘let the virus rip’ and took no precautions at all to see just how bad it did get. Well, at least none after the original wave in Wuhan, and arguably the first waves in Italy and NYC... we have a short memory about how bad that situation actually was. By all accounts, it was in fact ‘that bad’, and the only solution to prevent it from completely spiraling further out of control was the original hard lockdowns.

We will never know just what exactly would have happened if we did nothing, but we have a lot of science that suggests it wasn’t going to be good. There were no really good answers. There still aren’t.

 

[danlb_2000]

That's a little odd. Why single out one shift for certain rules instead of a blanket 12ft policy to everyone?

Because it's not practical to have everyone work like that. My company has actually done a great job dealing with this, we have had no known exposures within the building.

 

[Rimmit]

“Everything we do before seems like an overreaction, yet when we look back everything we did just wasn’t enough.”

Way back at the beginning of this I remember someone saying something like “if we succeed in preventing this from being a catastrophe, we’ll forever be accused of overreacting.”

So now, we’ve failed at preventing a catastrophe, and failed at any sort of nuance in our response, and there’s still going to be blame and pointed fingers for years.

Had to avoid the forums for quite a bit for my mental health, but I recently started checking back.

Yes way back in March I made that statement a couple times in various ways in response to a variety of people regarding the lockdowns in March and April.

Well.... we know how this song and dance sadly turned out.

On a happier note I did manage to get my 2nd dose of Moderna on Jan 22nd.

 

[danlb_2000]

Sorry if I interpreted "Just stop please" as a desire to see discussions end.


Please don't misinterpret - the source of my frustration with how the last 10 months have gone is not borne out of a selfish desire to do as I want. Rather, my frustration comes from the incalculable damage we have done to society in an effort to fight the virus. Was some of it inevitable? Of course. But much of it was unnecessary, and some of it was senseless.

Like you, I have been hurt by seeing what the virus does to people. But I have also been hurt by seeing what the shutdowns have done to people.

When thinking about this be sure to separate out the things that were the right decision at the time based on what we knew, and what was probably a bad decision even at the time. NJ where I live closed non-essential business back in March. Was this needed, in hindsight, probably not. Was it the right decision at the time, I think it was.

 

[DisneyDebRob]

Way back at the beginning of this I remember someone saying something like “if we succeed in preventing this from being a catastrophe, we’ll forever be accused of overreacting.”

So now, we’ve failed at preventing a catastrophe, and failed at any sort of nuance in our response, and there’s still going to be blame and pointed fingers for years.

Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t believe there is any population on earth that just ‘let the virus rip’ and took no precautions at all to see just how bad it did get. Well, at least none after the original wave in Wuhan, and arguably the first waves in Italy and NYC... we have a short memory about how bad that situation actually was. By all accounts, it was in fact ‘that bad’, and the only solution to prevent it from completely spiraling further out of control was the original hard lockdowns.

We will never know just what exactly would have happened if we did nothing, but we have a lot of science that suggests it wasn’t going to be good. There were no really good answers. There still aren’t.

Sweden would have been the closest to just letting it rip. They obviously let people know that the virus was spreading and if you could stay home please do. They let the businesses operate to not ruin their “economy “. Looked good for about a month and a half to two. In fact there were people here saying we should be doing it like Sweden.. economy doesn’t tank and let the people make the decisions for themselves. Well guess what.. didn’t work. Economy went to as the virus spread.. they have more deaths then neighboring countries who then put a lockdown on them with no one allowed to travel from Sweden to any of them.
They had a few measures like no attendance allowed for soccer.. schools closed into August but virtually nothing else.Even the man who came up with the plan is now saying it didn’t work as he thought.

Op-Ed: The Sweden Myth

How did the country outperform everybody on COVID-19? That's easy -- it didn't

www.medpagetoday.com

 

[Figgy1]

again our government failed us. They failed to care for the people all around. Both those who were sick and those who have suffered otherwise. The incalculable damage as you are stating could have been dealt with better in other ways. But no we have selfish idiots running the country. What you are calling senseless in your previous posts are things we could have done to help, but didn't. None of the closing was unnecessary though. None at all. In fact we didn't do enough. Excuse me if I sound unkind today, just lost 2 friends this weekend and another just diagnosed and we're all rallying hoping we don't lose another in the group. This person is single caregiver of a very high risk elderly person too. This could end poorly. I hope it doesn't.

I'm so sorry for everything you've been through and how poorly you've been treated on here

 

[Parker in NYC]

Way back at the beginning of this I remember someone saying something like “if we succeed in preventing this from being a catastrophe, we’ll forever be accused of overreacting.”

So now, we’ve failed at preventing a catastrophe, and failed at any sort of nuance in our response, and there’s still going to be blame and pointed fingers for years.

Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t believe there is any population on earth that just ‘let the virus rip’ and took no precautions at all to see just how bad it did get. Well, at least none after the original wave in Wuhan, and arguably the first waves in Italy and NYC... we have a short memory about how bad that situation actually was. By all accounts, it was in fact ‘that bad’, and the only solution to prevent it from completely spiraling further out of control was the original hard lockdowns.

We will never know just what exactly would have happened if we did nothing, but we have a lot of science that suggests it wasn’t going to be good. There were no really good answers. There still aren’t.

Marilyn Monroe Story Of My Life GIF - Marilyn Monroe Story Of My Life Same - Discover & Share GIFs

Click to view the GIF

tenor.com

 

[Disney Experience]

More Florida counties added to Publix supermarket & pharmacy covid vaccine locations. I am sure it will be booked up fast.

Publix adds Pasco and Pinellas counties for COVID-19 vaccine appointments

The state of Florida has expanded its vaccination partnership with Publix to Pasco and Pinellas counties, according to Publix’s website.

www.wfla.com

 

[danlb_2000]

Sweden would have been the closest to just letting it rip. They obviously let people know that the virus was spreading and if you could stay home please do. They let the businesses operate to not ruin their “economy “. Looked good for about a month and a half to two. In fact there were people here saying we should be doing it like Sweden.. economy doesn’t tank and let the people make the decisions for themselves. Well guess what.. didn’t work. Economy went to **** as the virus spread.. they have more deaths then neighboring countries who then put a lockdown on them with no one allowed to travel from Sweden to any of them.
They had a few measures like no attendance allowed for soccer.. schools closed into August but virtually nothing else.Even the man who came up with the plan is now saying it didn’t work as he thought.

Op-Ed: The Sweden Myth

How did the country outperform everybody on COVID-19? That's easy -- it didn't

www.medpagetoday.com

Keep in mind that out rights bans on things were unnecessary because people heeded the recommendations. They recommended people work from home and the secondary schools and universities do virtual learning, and a lot of them did it. People also voluntarily limited their travel. They also did do bans on gatherings over 50 people. So it's not like people in Sweden went about their daily lives like normal, they just chose to take precautions instead of being forced to.

 

[Disney Experience]

In Florida they are purposely directing some doses for under 65 but with serious comorbidities to hospitals. The reason they are not sending those doses to Publix or other pharmacies is that the Government in Florida did not want the Pharmacists to have to determine whether someone had a comorbidity warranting the limited shot allocations. Hospitals can determine it better than a pharmacist.

Florida Today news article:

After receiving about 266,000 weekly initial vaccine doses from the federal government, DeSantis said a larger quantity of 307,000 doses is expected to arrive Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. That freed up extra doses for the new allocation for the medically vulnerable.


“What we didn’t want, though, is if we’re putting it in pharmacies and we’re doing drive-thru sites, to have a pharmacist or a nurse have to referee someone’s comorbidity: ‘Oh, that doesn’t count.’ So we said this is something that the doctors have to handle," DeSantis said.

"It’s got to be in the confines of a hospital system," he said.

Two days before Christmas, DeSantis' original executive order on COVID-19 vaccinations approved doses for three populations: long-term-care facility residents and staff; people 65 years and older; and health care personnel with direct patient contact.

In addition, DeSantis' executive order said hospital providers may vaccinate persons "who they deem to be extremely vulnerable to COVID-19."

 

[hopemax]

Sweden would have been the closest to just letting it rip. They obviously let people know that the virus was spreading and if you could stay home please do. They let the businesses operate to not ruin their “economy “. Looked good for about a month and a half to two. In fact there were people here saying we should be doing it like Sweden.. economy doesn’t tank and let the people make the decisions for themselves. Well guess what.. didn’t work. Economy went to **** as the virus spread.. they have more deaths then neighboring countries who then put a lockdown on them with no one allowed to travel from Sweden to any of them.
They had a few measures like no attendance allowed for soccer.. schools closed into August but virtually nothing else.Even the man who came up with the plan is now saying it didn’t work as he thought.

Op-Ed: The Sweden Myth

How did the country outperform everybody on COVID-19? That's easy -- it didn't

www.medpagetoday.com

Brazil as well. Brazil, where the city of Manaus is in yet another wave of COVID virus. Manaus the city that was supposed be at over 50% toward herd immunity this summer and estimates of 75% more recently. Remember, when all it was going to take was 20-30% and we were all going to see how stupid we were when cases naturally dwindled off. Oh, and that magical cross-immunity from other viruses and vaccines used elsewhere in the world.

We also never talked about the Swedish reports concerning their 160,000 cases of known long COVID either, did we.

 

[Disney Experience]

The covid vaccine Federal retail pharmacy program list for USA. (Publix, Walgreens, CVS, Walmart, Rite Aid, etc)

FACT SHEET: President Biden Announces Increased Vaccine Supply, Initial Launch of the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program, and Expansion of FEMA Reimbursement to States | The White House

States, Tribes, and territories will receive a 5 percent supply increase this week, and Americans will soon have easier access to vaccinations through local pharmacies As the U.S. surpasses 26 million COVID-19 infections, President Biden took additional steps today to implement his comprehensive...

www.whitehouse.gov

 

[seabreezept813]

Brazil as well. Brazil, where the city of Manaus is in yet another wave of COVID virus. Manaus the city that was supposed be at over 50% toward herd immunity this summer and estimates of 75% more recently. Remember, when all it was going to take was 20-30% and we were all going to see how stupid we were when cases naturally dwindled off. Oh, and that magical cross-immunity from other viruses and vaccines used elsewhere in the world.

We also never talked about the Swedish reports concerning their 160,000 cases of known long COVID either, did we.

I wonder if it was a matter of not acting or just never having the medical infrastructure or educational outreach to prevent mass spread. I know my family sent money to our in laws in Brazil to support the local hospital there as they had no idea how to handle the virus and didn’t have access to any resources. So I guess maybe I answered my own question that it’s likely both. Government failure but not necessarily the failure of the people.

 

[GoofGoof]

Why stop discussing what went right/wrong in our response to the virus? Almost a year in, we have over 400k Americans dead, 20 million lost their jobs, a mental health crisis we don't even have time to start measuring yet, kids not allowed to play with friends or see each other's faces, trillions of dollars of economic damage, the list goes on.

Surely you don't think this is the best we could have done.

I have some ideas on what could have been done better. You may not agree with all of them and that's fine. We don't have to always agree with each other in order to engage in discussion or read each other's ideas.

It’s absolutely a valid discussion to want to look back on what went wrong. The US response to the pandemic was not good. It’s pretty well established that we did a terrible job overall. What portion of the blame is on the government vs the weak willed individuals who couldn’t follow simple precautions is a matter for academic debate in the future. there are many things the government could have done a lot better that’s for sure. When the dust settles on this pandemic all of those discussions will be had.

In reference to your post about protecting the high risk as the solution, that’s not a plan, that’s a politically slanted talking point pushed by the “open everything now“ crowd. In order for that plan to work you would have to isolate all of the high risk individuals and then have the government pay them to not work or leave their homes. For high risk individuals who live in multi-generational homes or in homes with children or spouses who are not high risk it would mean creating some form of housing to send those people to. In a simple example a father of 3 is high risk for medical reasons so has to be isolated. He would need to either require his wife and 3 kids to also isolate (no work for the wife, no school for the kids) and lock their home down or he would have to go live in a temporary location established for isolating the high risk like a hotel or a dorm.

The next problem is how do you replace those workers in the very economy you want to protect? There are over 10M active workers in the 65+ demographic in addition to well over 100M Americans 64 and under with medical conditions that put them at high risk for Covid. If Even half those workers could be shifted to remote work that still leaves a massive 50M+ workers who cannot work due to required isolation. That’s way more of an impact to the economy than the jobs furloughed and lost due to Covid restrictions. All of those people would need to be made whole by the government so trillions more in cost than what was spent. That also doesn’t factor in the emotional impact of telling millions of Americans they need to isolate themselves for a year+ and potentially either not see their spouses and kids or subject them to the same isolation.

The other issue is the isolate the high risk plan also doesn’t guarantee the economy isn’t still in ruins. The punch line of the theory is while the elderly are locked away the rest of the country goes about business as usual. That’s not likely to have happened. Take FL as a good example. Since Sept there have been no statewide restrictions on businesses yet restaurants, bars, theme parks and hotels are all suffering greatly. Removing government restrictions isn’t a magic pill to return the economy to normal. Lots of people are just not going to fully participate in the economy while cases surge.

What would be an interesting study would be how well did businesses due when cases were low vs when they spiked. I would assume there’s some uptick in business in a lower case environment. In other words if we all did our part (including the government) and we followed through on testing and tracing and kept cases more controlled would the economy have done better? In places like Australia and New Zealand that certainly seems to be the case. Even parts of Europe that had a lull in cases this past summer had a better economic boom than what we experienced here. In other words the biggest negative to the economy wasn’t businesses that were closed by the government it was a lack of control of Covid cases.

 

[GoofGoof]

If a single parent is a caretaker of a high-risk person, they would engage in the same protocols (and have access to the same PPE & funding) as a nursing home or hospital worker. The single parent wouldn't need to isolate; neither would those front line workers. However, they would be tested often & would behave as if they are infected when around those high-risk people.

Essentially, they would behave just as medical professionals who care for immune-compromised patients have done for decades. Those folks still went home, went out to eat, went to ballgames. But when they walked through those hospital doors, they were (are) laser like in their attention to hygiene.

In sum, you'd be building protective fences around the high-risk, while doing your best to keep things open. Of course there would still be economic damage. But maybe we only lose 10 million jobs instead of 20, and maybe we only see half the drug addiction and suicides. And maybe we have fewer than 400k+ virus deaths, because we're concentrating our efforts on protecting a targeted, smaller percentage of the population.

Replied to the last post before I read this.

We couldn’t get people to wear a mask in basic retail settings but they would be willing to do it at home 24 hours a day if a family member was high risk?

High risk is not a small percentage. It’s a third of the population or more. If it was a few million people that plan would have had more merit. Also, do we have any way of knowing how many jobs would have been saved? see my previous post. Depending on how many high risk are isolated it’s potentially a lot more people unemployed. Do we know that the drug addiction and suicide was all directly related to government lockdowns? Lots of people may have been emotionally distressed by seeing loved ones suffer and die, in other words the pandemic itself had a big emotional impact. Wouldn't the millions of people being forced to isolate indefinitely have been more emotionally distressed too? It’s robbing Peter to pay Paul. So maybe a 20 something is no longer depressed because they can go to the bar or a house party and freely see their friends but their neighbor who has been isolated alone at home since March is certain to be impacted mentally.

 

[FeelsSoGoodToBeBad]

If a single parent is a caretaker of a high-risk person, they would engage in the same protocols (and have access to the same PPE & funding) as a nursing home or hospital worker. The single parent wouldn't need to isolate; neither would those front line workers. However, they would be tested often & would behave as if they are infected when around those high-risk people.

Essentially, they would behave just as medical professionals who care for immune-compromised patients have done for decades. Those folks still went home, went out to eat, went to ballgames. But when they walked through those hospital doors, they were (are) laser like in their attention to hygiene.

Speaking as someone who worked for years in a long-term care facility and who took part in the rehab treatment of several patients who came directly from home situations in which they had been taken care of by family members, I can tell you with 100% certainty that home caregivers would not have had any consistent "access to the same PPE and funding" as any professional facility and odds are they would have next to no training to "engage in the same protocols" as healthcare facilities. Dollars to doughnuts most haven't been educated enough to even know what they don't know or what they're potentially doing wrong. Also consider (as others have stated) that someone taking care of a high-risk person also has responsibilities outside that "job". They are at risk by virtue of their other responsibilities (grocery shopping, pharmacy runs, caring for children, working outside the home, etc.) and thus would ultimately put their charge at risk.

Finally, it isn't as if there is never infection spread in hospitals and LTC facilities. While rare, despite best practices and the use of PPE all day long, infections do occur. If that happens in a highly controlled environment filled with professionals specifically trained in the use of PPE, infection control, and isolation protocols, it is completely unrealistic to think that someone taking care of a loved one at home for days, weeks, months, nearly a year, would be able to successfully keep someone from being exposed.

Not trying to attack anyone, but I get frustrated when people have such a simplified view of what being a full-time caregiver is like or what tools they have available to them.

 

[hopemax]

Replied to the last post before I read this.

We couldn’t get people to wear a mask in basic retail settings but they would be willing to do it at home 24 hours a day if a family member was high risk?

The other day, the CDC released a stat that only 38% of LTC staff were vaccinated in the first attempt to vaccinate this group (they are trying to circle back to give these workers a 2nd chance to boost compliance). While this is undoubtedly an undercount to a point, (some workers work in multiple locations so if they got vaccinated at their primary location they would show up as a "no" in their secondary, or if they got vaccinated not through their employer), it is unlikely that the undercount is so great that it would be pushing the 80%+ that we're looking for. Residents were 78%.

LTC staff would absolutely have to be compliant as long as the residents remained high risk. We were chastised for promoting "strategies that would never happen so why talk about them," when people were talking about stimulus, wage replacement, rent/mortgage assistance, mental health resources, etc. but others are allowed to live in this fantasy world where we could just lock up the people who were high risk AND the people who are necessary for their care and everyone would simply comply and pay for it. It's not a good faith discussion without the specifics about logistics.