Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion

[DCBaker]

Numbers are out - there were 73 new reported deaths.

 

[GoofGoof]

Since a lot of people probably aren't going to give up holiday gatherings it would probably be a good idea to move as many kids to virtual as possible, and get also get as many adults working from home as possible for two months so even if people do have holiday gatherings it will help limit the damage it will do.

I totally agree. I called this happening a few weeks ago. It makes me a little angry because I know people aren’t doing what they should and I know it’s not my kid’s schools or the kids themselves at fault, but they still take the hit. I don’t give a rat’s behind who gets triggered by me calling people selfish...the behavior is selfish.

 

[hopemax]

Prisoner's Dilemma / Game Theory on a massive scale.

 

[DisneyCane]

If we all followed all the restrictions (and in some places the restrictions existed, like masks and limits on bars in FL) then we would be in a lot better shape. The problem is everyone thinks they are the exception. My friends aren’t sick so we are OK to get together. Nobody in my family does risky stuff so it’s OK to get together for Thanksgiving. You talked about regularly going to local bars but then said you don’t do anything risky. I know it’s a matter of opinion, but to me those things contradict each other. I think it’s a slippery slope to say it’s ok to get together with others as long as you feel you haven’t done anything risky. You really don’t know sure what others are doing 24/7.

I never talked about going to local bars because I don't. When I drink it is either with a meal at a restaurant or at private parties, tailgate parties, etc. I don't personally spend time with that many different people so I have a pretty good idea of what the ones that I do spend time with do with their leisure time. When we gather, people from different households are sitting in different parts of the room, well over 6 feet from each other.

While cases in FL have increased since the restrictions were mostly lifted (there are still restrictions in most, if not all of the larger counties), there's no sign of an exponential increase due to the restrictions being lifted.

On 9/25 (the day the executive order went out), the 7-day rolling average was 2,604. Through yesterday it is 5,177. So it has about doubled in 7 weeks. In the big spike over the summer, from 6/5 (I picked the last Friday before you could see the curve growing) the 7-day rolling average took 11 days to go from 1,005 to 2,028 on 6/16. The rate of increase was MUCH higher in that spike which occurred while a lot of the restrictions were still in place (including WDW being closed).

I don't think removal of restrictions can be blamed for the entire increase and for whatever portion they are to blame, they don't seem to be leading to an exponential increase or causing the curve to head back to the summer peak.

 

[Figgy1]

I totally agree. I called this happening a few weeks ago. It makes me a little angry because I know people aren’t doing what they should and I know it’s not my kid’s schools or the kids themselves at fault, but they still take the hit. I don’t give a rat’s behind who gets triggered by me calling people selfish...the behavior is selfish.

We decided to cancel all family holiday gatherings at the beginning of the month including contactless gift exchange and waving from inside the cars. To us it wasn't worth making anybody having to travel just to see us in a parking lot from inside a vehicle

 

[SamusAranX]

Speaking of corporate stewardship, I just got an email from Spirit Airlines offering great deals for holiday travel.

nice optics there

 

[Jrb1979]

I never talked about going to local bars because I don't. When I drink it is either with a meal at a restaurant or at private parties, tailgate parties, etc. I don't personally spend time with that many different people so I have a pretty good idea of what the ones that I do spend time with do with their leisure time. When we gather, people from different households are sitting in different parts of the room, well over 6 feet from each other.

While cases in FL have increased since the restrictions were mostly lifted (there are still restrictions in most, if not all of the larger counties), there's no sign of an exponential increase due to the restrictions being lifted.

On 9/25 (the day the executive order went out), the 7-day rolling average was 2,604. Through yesterday it is 5,177. So it has about doubled in 7 weeks. In the big spike over the summer, from 6/5 (I picked the last Friday before you could see the curve growing) the 7-day rolling average took 11 days to go from 1,005 to 2,028 on 6/16. The rate of increase was MUCH higher in that spike which occurred while a lot of the restrictions were still in place (including WDW being closed).

I don't think removal of restrictions can be blamed for the entire increase and for whatever portion they are to blame, they don't seem to be leading to an exponential increase or causing the curve to head back to the summer peak.

Honestly for the most part I think most businesses are doing well with restrictions in that the spread isn't from them. Its mainly coming from private gatherings. Its a shame so many want the economy to come back but aren't willing to sacrifice anything to do it. You need healthy people to have a healthy economy. The more spread there is the more the economy is hurt. IMO the days of warnings are over. You had 8 months to get the picture. Its now time for people to pay the piper for having parties and not following guidelines.

 

[JoeCamel]

Speaking of corporate stewardship, I just got an email from Spirit Airlines offering great deals for holiday travel.

nice optics there

If I wanted to fly to NYC I could for $39 RT. Why would I?

 

[Parker in NYC]

If I wanted to fly to NYC I could for $39 RT. Why would I?

It's depressing here anyway.

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

Honestly for the most part I think most businesses are doing well with restrictions in that the spread isn't from them. Its mainly coming from private gatherings

I’m not disagreeing with you but how do we know? It seems there has been very little in actual studies and tracing.

 

[Disstevefan1]

I don’t think you’re much of a history student.

In the last 140 years...what major situation OF CHOICE didn’t work out in the United States gaining more wealth and prosperity than anyone else?

I’d say Vietnam...and nothing else.

Our “air” is baked in. We are failing here though. Like it or not.

Doctors Without Borders is an apolitical organization that identifies worldwide health crisis and dispatches caregivers to flashpoints...

Guess where they have been deploying since the summer??

I thought we were discussing individuals when we were discussing, "Things always work out for us” because of our name and history"

As for countries, I was lucky enough to have been born in the United States . We have our problems, but the USA is the greatest country on the face of the earth and yes the USA spends billions and billions helping other countries.

One of the many things great about the USA is if you don’t like it here, you are free to leave.

 

[David copperfield]

Wow. Well, I *was*going to post a trip report. Yacht Club, 4 parks, 4 days. My Dear Wife was gratified to discover 2 new favorite restaurants (her old favorites were covid-closed) & we got to ride smuggler's run. The parks seemed virtually empty. Yes, there were some lines, though largely because of either lengthy & complex disinfectant procedures or because so much is otherwise closed, & they moved rapidly. I fear saying anything else will kick up political dust. So all I will say is aside from the requisite village idiots, everyone we met....everyone, guests, CMs, everyone...wore masks, socially distanced, and.... said thank you. There was a ton of courtesy and gratitude going on.

 

[hopemax]

I’m not disagreeing with you but how do we know? It seems there has been very little in actual studies and tracing.

So there was an interesting Twitter thread from a journalist with the Nashville newspaper, The Tennessean. The article apparently has more info than the Twitter thread, but the paper has a paywall, so he was doing the highlights on Twitter. He explained how with a lot of research, despite not having names, he was able to track how the virus moved through Nashville. I think there is more going on than we know, but studies take time and info is decentralized.

 

[Jrb1979]

I’m not disagreeing with you but how do we know? It seems there has been very little in actual studies and tracing.

Here they have been doing well with contact tracing and they have found that the majority of cases are from family gatherings.

All restaurants here have to take your name and number from everyone at your table. They now have to write down the time you came and left. If you refuse to wear a mask they will not serve you.

 

[mmascari]

"The government" (in any country) can't "keep everybody safe" and have a functioning society. They are mutually exclusive goals. The best they can do without a vaccine is "flatten the curve" to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed with acceptable restrictions.

Everybody staying at home for a few months is not acceptable to the vast majority of people. As a human being, just existing isn't living.

This is a false assertion. There are all manor of things that can be done that are less than "everyone stays home" but still more than is currently being done to provide benefit. At a policy level from the top, we've chosen to ignore most of those things.

Considering that you state it is happening in all 50 states, how do you then blame it on putting "your faith in the wrong political leader?" The governors are in control of everything and the President doesn't actually have any power over them. You may say that he has influence over the Republican governors but certainly not over the Democrat governors. Yet every state is having issues to some degree.

As I've said before, there are things only the federal government can do, primarily funding. Plan direction and funding set at the federal level and then specifics implemented at the local level. Without a federal leadership direction and funding, it's 50 independent states all slightly different, all without funding, all competing for the same stuff driving the cost up.

It is a virus. Viruses spread and infect new hosts. That's what they exist to do. The only way to for human intervention to truly stop them or even significantly slow them while maintaining some semblance of civilization is with a vaccine that prevents them from infecting a new host.

It isn't a political policy issue like funding Medicare. It is a disease.

This is the same false assertion that a vaccine is the only solution. It's definitely a policy issue.

Stopping infectious spread is as simple as stopping an infected person from interacting with an infectible person. A vaccine makes this easy by significantly reducing the number of infectible people. Masks, plexiglass, air circulation, filters all try to reduce the chance that an interaction leads to infection. Lockdowns and distancing try to eliminate all interactions irrespective of which person it is, they're broad based. As such, they'll target just as many or more interactions where neither person is infected. We're not doing enough to target infected people. If we devoted more resources on identifying and isolating infected people along with providing support for people who think they're infected to isolate instead of interact, then we would could reduce interactions of of infected people with targeted actions.

We've chosen as federal policy to focus on vaccine and treatment and not other stuff.

This is as simple as watching the percent positivity. Larger numbers means there's a higher chance of an infected infectible interaction. Small numbers mean we understand where more infection is and can then take targeted action.

I realize the number is very large, but even if every single person in the US was infected (which isn't possible because herd immunity would happen at some point), somewhere around 0.2% of the population would die from it and maybe another 0.2% would die because they wouldn't be able to get needed medical care in the short term while this happened which would be over the course of 2-3 months. While 0.4% of 330+ million people is a lot, even doing absolutely nothing, well over 99% of the population would be "protected."

1.3 Million is the number, it's definitely large.

It's probably wrong and to small too. I'm not sure where the 0.2% comes from. Johns Hopkins says the US has 10,642,218 infections and 243,044 deaths right now. 2.284% of infections dead. We can certainly debate that 10,642,218 is under counting. It would need to be 11 times larger for the dead to only be 0.2%. If actual infected is double and we're headed for 60% population before we stop, the larger number is 2.2 Million dead. We can hope the infected really is 11 times higher, if that continues another 8 million infections reported with another 250,000 dead and we'll be at a presumed 60% of the population infected and begin to slow down after 500,000 dead. But, it's going to go up fast from there if it's not that order of magnitude of underreported infected. Might be nice if we were doing more work to identify and isolate infected people.

You contradict yourself when you say that all COVID deaths are preventable but that you aren't talking about total lockdowns. If you don't have total lockdowns, there will still be plenty of deaths and therefore not nearly all of them are preventable.

Again, there's lots of room between what we're doing an total lockdowns. Not being able to prevent everything doesn't mean we should do nothing.

Comparing doing anything as not the same as total lockdown and saying a total lockdown is the only solution that does it all completely misses the goal at best and is a bad faith diversion at worst.

Yep, for kicks I went back into the March/April part of this thread. We said at the time that all models are wrong, but some are useful. I'm not sure how true that ended up being. The most conservative models at he time showed cases going to near zero by August, mroe aggressive ones showed by May.

I've always assumed those models included concentrated effort to identify and isolate infected people. That they assume actions will be taken to get community spread under control and isolated. Since we didn't do that, they're all super useless. Hopefully the current models eliminated this assumption are are based on what's actually been done over the last few months.

I am going to Utah in January. I do not live with anyone elderly, in fact I live alone. I do not visit or interact with my grandparents, parents, and pretty much no one in my family except my younger brother and his wife, rarely. I am, and all of us are getting tested when I get back. I am not dining indoors while I am there. In fact the only indoors I’ll be is with our small group of friends (5) when we sleep at night in our rental home, and the grocery store, which i do at home anyway, so we can eat at the house.

Not judging here, but as a practical matter what this really means is that size of your POD is increasing by the size of all the PODS of those 5 people. Tested or not, as false negatives with rapid tests in early days seems to be common, when you see people in your POD (brother) after you return, it's increased the size of your brother's POD through no direct action on his part. His POD of exposure now includes those in the PODS of your 5 friends. If one of them is in a POD with someone who does risky things, that person relatively far removed from your brother is effectively in your bother's POD.

Testing helps to mitigate some, since if you're positive you'll contain it. But, if you're negative it probably doesn't mean you are in the clear. If you get a better test (that takes longer and isolate while waiting), that probably helps more. Or, get a bunch of rapid tests isolating until the last one after some number of days. Or, just isolate as if a test was positive. Similar, if the 5 of you all isolate before the trip too you could reduce the effective size of the PODs you're bringing together combining with the others.

All of those different things do different amounts to reduce the effect. None of them are prefect. We each do whatever is enough to make us comfortable. Hence, not judging, just the practicalities of it. It's also a good example of why it's so hard to isolate only the high risk. If we imagine that your brother interacts frequently with someone (in your POD even if you don't know it) who has high risk contacts. And, if you were to do no extra measures that person would be exposed (through a longer chain) to the imaginary reckless contact of your friend. Imaginary reckless-->friend-->you in the rental-->brother-->frequent contact-->vulnerable person.

Even in my immediate household, we have this type of issue. Some do better at preventative steps than others. Which exposes even the more careful because we don't really isolate from each other.

All of this is another good reason to focus on getting community spread under control. With low spread (more than none, not gone), that long chain of imaginary people means each interaction isn't likely to carry an infection. Conversely, at rampant community spread, there's a much higher chance of an infection passing through the chain.

 

[GoofGoof]

I never talked about going to local bars because I don't. When I drink it is either with a meal at a restaurant or at private parties, tailgate parties, etc. I don't personally spend time with that many different people so I have a pretty good idea of what the ones that I do spend time with do with their leisure time. When we gather, people from different households are sitting in different parts of the room, well over 6 feet from each other.

While cases in FL have increased since the restrictions were mostly lifted (there are still restrictions in most, if not all of the larger counties), there's no sign of an exponential increase due to the restrictions being lifted.

On 9/25 (the day the executive order went out), the 7-day rolling average was 2,604. Through yesterday it is 5,177. So it has about doubled in 7 weeks. In the big spike over the summer, from 6/5 (I picked the last Friday before you could see the curve growing) the 7-day rolling average took 11 days to go from 1,005 to 2,028 on 6/16. The rate of increase was MUCH higher in that spike which occurred while a lot of the restrictions were still in place (including WDW being closed).

I don't think removal of restrictions can be blamed for the entire increase and for whatever portion they are to blame, they don't seem to be leading to an exponential increase or causing the curve to head back to the summer peak.

My bad, I thought at one point you had said you were going out on a regular basis to places like bars and restaurants without restrictions. It may have been someone else saying that.

I don’t think it’s just the removal of restrictions driving increased cases, it’s the attitude of people as well. The more people are told from the government and other people they listen to that it’s no big deal the less likely they are to be cautious. I also think it’s the crossing of activities. So someone goes to a crowded public place like a bar and gets exposed then they go to a small gathering with a dozen or so friends at someone’s house and people feel safe not knowing that their friend did something unsafe the night before. Sub in a Tinder hookup for the trip to the bar, same story. I don’t think it’s straight up people going to bars with no restrictions that’s the problem.

 

[Heppenheimer]

I thought we were discussing individuals when we were discussing, "Things always work out for us” because of our name and history"

As for countries, I was lucky enough to have been born in the United States . We have our problems, but the USA is the greatest country on the face of the earth and yes the USA spends billions and billions helping other countries.

One of the many things great about the USA is if you don’t like it here, you are free to leave.

As a proud veteran of the US military, but one who has lived in 3 other first world countries for periods of time, allow me to say.... Nope, we simply aren't, both on a purely subjective level and according to any number of metrics. And it seems sometimes that we've all but given up trying. And if that statement comes across as unpatriotic, well, forgive me for wanting my country to do a little better sometimes.

We are far from the worst country in the world, but our rankings in things like literacy, health, economic mobility, developmental indices, the Gini coefficient and others show pretty much that we simply aren't the best in many, many things.

 

[Lilofan]

It's depressing here anyway.

At least the food is better there.

 

[SamusAranX]

Not judging here, but as a practical matter what this really means is that size of your POD is increasing by the size of all the PODS of those 5 people. Tested or not, as false negatives with rapid tests in early days seems to be common, when you see people in your POD (brother) after you return, it's increased the size of your brother's POD through no direct action on his part. His POD of exposure now includes those in the PODS of your 5 friends. If one of them is in a POD with someone who does risky things, that person relatively far removed from your brother is effectively in your bother's POD.

Testing helps to mitigate some, since if you're positive you'll contain it. But, if you're negative it probably doesn't mean you are in the clear. If you get a better test (that takes longer and isolate while waiting), that probably helps more. Or, get a bunch of rapid tests isolating until the last one after some number of days. Or, just isolate as if a test was positive. Similar, if the 5 of you all isolate before the trip too you could reduce the effective size of the PODs you're bringing together combining with the others.

All of those different things do different amounts to reduce the effect. None of them are prefect. We each do whatever is enough to make us comfortable. Hence, not judging, just the practicalities of it. It's also a good example of why it's so hard to isolate only the high risk. If we imagine that your brother interacts frequently with someone (in your POD even if you don't know it) who has high risk contacts. And, if you were to do no extra measures that person would be exposed (through a longer chain) to the imaginary reckless contact of your friend. Imaginary reckless-->friend-->you in the rental-->brother-->frequent contact-->vulnerable person.

Even in my immediate household, we have this type of issue. Some do better at preventative steps than others. Which exposes even the more careful because we don't really isolate from each other.

All of this is another good reason to focus on getting community spread under control. With low spread (more than none, not gone), that long chain of imaginary people means each interaction isn't likely to carry an infection. Conversely, at rampant community spread, there's a much higher chance of an infection passing through the chain.

No worries, I appreciate your perspective. My brother isn't going, I mentioned him as an example of one of the few people I still see.

As far as the POD, goes, one already had it (and so did most of his household; the other two, I don't know how they didn't get it since they were under the same roof and eating at home together, etc. normal activities at home before they came down with symptoms, so they assume the other two were asymptomatic) , one is my roommate and lives here anyway, and one lives on his own. The other one lives with his healthy parents, but they made testing before coming home to there (after Utah, but before actual going home) a condition of going with us.

After the trip, at least on my part, I am going back to normal of 2020; working from home, only seeing the same few people, avoiding indoors, etc. and I still unfortunately won't be seeing 98 percent of my family.

So I definitely acknowledge it [what you're saying]. We can't completely eliminate risk, but we can minimize it and do our best. I just think, again depending on your situation and the area around you, there's a happy medium or level to be found here.

 

[DisneyTransport]

One of the many things great about the USA is if you don’t like it here, you are free to leave.

Sounds like a great way to stop progress. The US has NEVER changed because people dont like one thing or another over the course of our history, all the people who disagreed just left /s