Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion

[havoc315]

Ummm.... It wasn't my perception. People would literally say, "stay inside, stay alive."

Did you ever look at webcams of New York City a year ago?

I was in NYC a year ago... taking walks outside. Central Park was a bit too crowded, not enough social distancing.

Of course many non-residential streets were ghost towns — because all the businesses were closed. No reason for thousands of people to fill Times Square when every theater, restaurant and business is closed.

and I never saw any slogan of “stay inside, stay alive.” I even googled it and found no significant results related to covid.

I did hear “stay home”— that definitely pops up in Google - which was don’t go to work, don’t go to businesses. No agency ever meant it as stay indoors, and only idiots would understand it as stay indoors.

 

[GimpYancIent]

Ummm.... It wasn't my perception. People would literally say, "stay inside, stay alive."

Did you ever look at webcams of New York City a year ago?

NYC is a unique environment where social distancing is near impossible due to the population density. Masking is the #1 mitigating factor for everyone. Masking is less of a mitigating factor in other areas of the country where people not being within 30 yards of each other is a norm.

 

[sullyinMT]

Totally curious. How do people feel about hoarding vaccine appointments? I'm in some hunting groups and I found someone who always has appointments to transfer. It feels wrong to do just so they get the ability to be a savior, but we are still struggling to have appointments available in our county. I'm beginning to wonder if there are more people like that who are taking slots.


Well that's a great reason not to go! Fingers crossed!

Reminds me of a woman here during the great TP crisis of 2020. Before shopping limits were put in place, she seemed to have all Costco, Sam's and Target stock of every brand in her basement. Made a few social media classified posts about how she was willing to be a Good Samaritan and dole out 4-8 rolls at a time. Rightfully got blasted by the rest of the city for having her idea of charity be way misplaced.

I commend people like you, trying to get appointments for people. Maybe you have 5 or 6 friends and you make 10 appointments. Keep the time slots they can, and dump the rest back to original inventory. Keeping them in an effort to look like the savior (general you) you're not when so many likely don't know how to find (general) you rubs me the wrong way.

 

[ParentsOf4]

Just a quick update on Israel. The 7 day moving average of new cases has dropped to just over 300 a day. Adjusting for their population size that‘s roughly 3 cases per 100,000 people. The equivalent in the US would be under 10,000 cases a day which is a metric that Fauci said could be the point where we start to reopen businesses at full capacity and lose masks.

Here's where I think Fauci's number is coming from.

(Before I get into too much detail and as a point of reference, the CDC reports that 51.8% got the flu vaccine in 2019-2020. The US will soon be above that number for COVID vaccinations. And I hope my numbers below are right! )

Over the last decade, the U.S. has averaged about 29 million cases and 36 thousand deaths due to influenza each year. Whether you agree with it or not, this is considered "normal". Normal in the sense that we don't wear masks and we do run at full capacity. 36 thousand deaths per year means about 100 deaths per day. (Obviously, it's higher during flu season.)

With a population of approximately 330 million, this means that about 9% of the population gets the flu each year, while 0.011% die from the flu each year.

Other data suggests that COVID-19 is 10-20 times more deadly than the flu. Let's go with the larger number of 20 times more deadly.

This means that in order to have what (unfortunately) is considered a normal year of 36 thousand deaths, we can only have about 1.5 million COVID cases per year (29 million / 20), which works out to 4060 COVID cases per day. If we go with a lower number of 10 times more deadly or take into account that, because of vaccines, most will be protected against severe COVID symptoms, I can see how 10,000 cases per day makes sense.

Still, cases might be the wrong metric to monitor. With so many vaccinated, it seems likely that many might continue to contract COVID but have non-life threatening reactions to it. Cases might remain high while deaths might not.

We would not be doing what we are doing if COVID was non-lethal. With this is mind, the number of deaths is the more appropriate metric to monitor. In order to get to the normal of 36 thousand deaths per year, the United States needs to get closer to 100 COVID deaths per day before we can fully return to normal.

 

[GoofGoof]

“Safer at Home,” “Shelter in Place.” I’ve said it a million times, words matter. The actual mandates seldom reflected the news marketing.

Just like now, where there’s a lot of intellectual dishonesty about how “closed” the nation, or pockets of it, still are. Folks get whipped up too easily. I’m guilty sometimes.

I agree with this. There will come a time in the not so distant future where the crisis will be over and we will have time to reflect on what actually was done, what was successful and what was not. It’s too soon to start looking at that and draw conclusions.

It is kinda crazy how narratives created in social media echo chambers have actually morphed into people’s memories of what actually happened. Many people didn’t follow the stay at home orders or many of the Covid protocols all along yet some of these same people insist they were locked in their homes for months. I find it pretty ironic that the same people who are saying Biden’s target of having backyard BBQs by July 4th is meaningless because they never stopped doing that also claim that there were full stay at home orders that forced them to not leave their home. It would be tough to have a backyard BBQ without leaving your home

 

[JoeCamel]

Reminds me of a woman here during the great TP crisis of 2020. Before shopping limits were put in place, she seemed to have all Costco, Sam's and Target stock of every brand in her basement. Made a few social media classified posts about how she was willing to be a Good Samaritan and dole out 4-8 rolls at a time. Rightfully got blasted by the rest of the city for having her idea of charity be way misplaced.

I commend people like you, trying to get appointments for people. Maybe you have 5 or 6 friends and you make 10 appointments. Keep the time slots they can, and dump the rest back to original inventory. Keeping them in an effort to look like the savior (general you) you're not when so many likely don't know how to find (general) you rubs me the wrong way.

Same with some of my neighbors offering to pick up school hand out meals for 20. Got to the point the people with real hungry kids couldn't get any. Started keeping track and it stopped

 

[JoeCamel]

Over the last decade, the U.S. has averaged about 29 million cases and 36 thousand deaths due to influenza each year. Whether you agree with it or not, this is considered "normal". Normal in the sense that we don't wear masks and we do run at full capacity. 36 thousand deaths per year means about 100 deaths per day. (Obviously, it's higher during flu season.)



We would not be doing what we are doing if COVID was non-lethal. With this is mind, the number of deaths is the more appropriate metric to monitor. In order to get to the normal of 36 thousand deaths per year, the United States needs to get closer to 100 COVID deaths per day before we can fully return to normal.

I hope we have learned something on a personal level from this grand experiment and we can reduce the incidence of flu and death from flu going forward.

 

[TXRob]

I hope we have learned something on a personal level from this grand experiment and we can reduce the incidence of flu and death from flu going forward.

You can wear a mask the rest of your life. Feel free

 

[havoc315]

That is a bit different than the response above saying someone who owned a farm had to stay inside. NYC is a unique scenario, so staying home probably does entail staying inside your actual residence for the most part. But it was never you need to be inside your home 100% of time. It was stay at home and don't go places unless you absolutely need to.

But it wasn't the case in NYC either. NYC is composed of residential neighborhoods and commercial neighborhoods. Most are not too mixed, except for a few retail and restaurant businesses sometimes on ground level.
For example -- Many parts of downtown ALWAYS look like a ghost town on weekends, even pre-Covid. I used to go into a downtown office on Saturdays... these huge tall office buildings, but the streets were 99% empty, because the streets are really nothing but offices that were mostly empty on weekends.

So yes, parts of NYC became ghost towns -- that's what happens to the theater district when all the theaters are closed, to restaurant districts when all the restaurants are closed, to office districts when all the offices are closed.

Central Park never became a ghost town.

 

[JoeCamel]

You can wear a mask the rest of your life. Feel free

Not the point

 

[GoofGoof]

Here's where I think Fauci's number is coming from.

(Before I get into too much detail and as a point of reference, the CDC reports that 51.8% got the flu vaccine in 2019-2020. The US will soon be above that number for COVID vaccinations. And I hope my numbers below are right! )

Over the last decade, the U.S. has averaged about 29 million cases and 36 thousand deaths due to influenza each year. Whether you agree with it or not, this is considered "normal". Normal in the sense that we don't wear masks and we do run at full capacity. 36 thousand deaths per year means about 100 deaths per day. (Obviously, it's higher during flu season.)

With a population of approximately 330 million, this means that about 9% of the population gets the flu each year, while 0.011% die from the flu each year.

Other data suggests that COVID-19 is 10-20 times more deadly than the flu. Let's go with the larger number of 20 times more deadly.

This means that in order to have what (unfortunately) is considered a normal year of 36 thousand deaths, we can only have about 1.5 million COVID cases per year (29 million / 20), which works out to 4060 COVID cases per day. If we go with a lower number of 10 times more deadly or take into account that, because of vaccines, most will be protected against severe COVID symptoms, I can see how 10,000 cases per day makes sense.

Still, cases might be the wrong metric to monitor. With so many vaccinated, it seems likely that many might continue to contract COVID but have non-life threatening reactions to it. Cases might remain high while deaths might not.

We would not be doing what we are doing if COVID was non-lethal. With this is mind, the number of deaths is the more appropriate metric to monitor. In order to get to the normal of 36 thousand deaths per year, the United States needs to get closer to 100 COVID deaths per day before we can fully return to normal.

I agree that deaths should be part of the math too. Since hospitalizations and deaths lag cases, cases are also an important indicator of future levels of death.

He said this in an interview in March:
Tapper asked Fauci, "When would be the right time to reopen businesses at full capacity? When would be the right time to remove masks?" The doctor's answer suggested that we need to stay vigilant for a while yet. "Well, I wouldn't want to see a light switch go on and off with regard to restrictions, Jake. I would like to see, as we get the level of virus in the community to a very low level, well, well below the 60,000 to 70,000 new infections, somewhere—I will just pick a number, even though there's not a good model there yet—but I would say less than 10,000, and maybe even considerably less than that."

So not a firm commitment on 10,000 being the number but I consider that a really good starting point when we can get serious about talking about starting to lift restrictions. I see it like I’ve seen Covid restrictions all along, a dial not a light switch. If we get the vaccines done at a high enough level I think we start to see significant dialing back as early as the end of May. Not a full return to normal, but meaningful changes and a lot of discussion on timing. If the dial back doesn’t cause a major surge due to the number of people vaccinated we dial back more and more until we hit “normal”. As I’ve said many times we don’t know what percent we need immune to hit true, lasting herd immunity but we also don’t need to hit full herd immunity to see cases drop and to start relaxing restrictions.

Here is the full article:

Dr. Fauci Says This Is When We Can Get Rid of COVID Restrictions

Dr. Fauci set the number of daily new cases that we need to get below before COVID restrictions can be lifted and normal life can resume.

bestlifeonline.com

 

[pixie225]

NYC is a unique environment where social distancing is near impossible due to the population density. Masking is the #1 mitigating factor for everyone. Masking is less of a mitigating factor in other areas of the country where people not being within 30 yards of each other is a norm.

My daughter lives in NYC - West Village. Her building super said of the 65 apts in her building my daughter and 2 others were the only tenants still living there during the height of the pandemic. We would go in to "rescue" her out of the city every weekend and bring her home or to our upstate house for a short stay. The city was absolutely dead during that time. Now is is bustling again - traffic is back, streets are hard to get through as restaurants have built outdoor seating into the street, pedestrian traffic is way up. Masks are still being worn as people are walking - good to see.

 

[JoeCamel]

My daughter lives in NYC - West Village. Her building super said of the 65 apts in her building my daughter and 2 others were the only tenants still living there during the height of the pandemic. We would go in to "rescue" her out of the city every weekend and bring her home or to our upstate house for a short stay. The city was absolutely dead during that time. Now is is bustling again - traffic is back, streets are hard to get through as restaurants have built outdoor seating into the street, pedestrian traffic is way up. Masks are still being worn as people are walking - good to see.

We adjust, adapt and learn. Humans, no matter how little we expect from them they tend to find a way.

 

[ParentsOf4]

He said this in an interview in March:
Tapper asked Fauci, "When would be the right time to reopen businesses at full capacity? When would be the right time to remove masks?" The doctor's answer suggested that we need to stay vigilant for a while yet. "Well, I wouldn't want to see a light switch go on and off with regard to restrictions, Jake. I would like to see, as we get the level of virus in the community to a very low level, well, well below the 60,000 to 70,000 new infections, somewhere—I will just pick a number, even though there's not a good model there yet—but I would say less than 10,000, and maybe even considerably less than that."

So not a firm commitment on 10,000 being the number but I consider that a really good starting point when we can get serious about talking about starting to lift restrictions. I see it like I’ve seen Covid restrictions all along, a dial not a light switch. If we get the vaccines done at a high enough level I think we start to see significant dialing back as early as the end of May. Not a full return to normal, but meaningful changes and a lot of discussion on timing. If the dial back doesn’t cause a major surge due to the number of people vaccinated we dial back more and more until we hit “normal”. As I’ve said many times we don’t know what percent we need immune to hit true, lasting herd immunity but we also don’t need to hit full herd immunity to see cases drop and to start relaxing restrictions.

Here is the full article:

Dr. Fauci Says This Is When We Can Get Rid of COVID Restrictions

Dr. Fauci set the number of daily new cases that we need to get below before COVID restrictions can be lifted and normal life can resume.

bestlifeonline.com

But this quote from him highlights Fauci’s major weakness - his constantly changing the goalposts.

As I just demonstrated with my prior post, it is possible to use data to determine the appropriate point to lift all restrictions. Some might disagree with my calculation and take a different approach.

Fauci doesn’t do that. One week it’s “maybe this”. The next week it’s “maybe that”. Just a quick search of the Internet shows that it’s easy to find Fauci contradicting himself.

I’d dump my doctor if he told me something different each time I visited him.

Fauci is highly educated and highly knowledgeable. He needs to treat the patient (i.e. the United States) as much as the disease (i.e. COVID).

 

[DisneyCane]

Either Publix has a boat load of appointments for next week or people aren't motivated to book them. The window has been open for over three hours and only Miami-Dade county is completely booked at this time.

 

[GoofGoof]

But this quote from him highlights Fauci’s major weaknesses - his constantly changing the goalposts.

As I just demonstrated with my prior post, it is possible to use data to determine the appropriate point to lift all restrictions. Some might disagree with my calculation and take a different approach.

Fauci doesn’t do that. One week it’s “maybe this”. The next week it’s “maybe that”. Just a quick search of the Internet shows that it’s easy to find Fauci contradicting himself.

I’d dump my doctor if he told me something different each time I visited him.

Fauci is highly educated and highly knowledgeable. He needs to treat the patient (i.e. the United States) as much as the disease (i.e. COVID).

I don’t disagree. I’ve been critical of him for the same reasons. Back in March when he did this interview he also gave an estimate of a return to normal in 2022 in another interview. It’s hard to reconcile those 2 statements.

I don’t think we can say at this point what the numbers need to be and even if the administration put that date or statistic out there it’s almost certain to change. I just look at 10,000 cases a day as a metric we need to reach to get serious about real, meaningful relaxing of restrictions everywhere. Our 7 day daily average of new cases is still over 6X that number so we clearly aren’t there yet, but we can get there pretty soon if enough people take the vaccine. Israel is a good data point to compare against since they are 4-6 weeks ahead of us on vaccinations, have seen almost all of their recent cases from a more contagious variant and have reached an equivalent level of daily cases adjusted for the population size. I do think it’s necessary to factor in hospitalizations and deaths as well.

 

[Heppenheimer]

We adjust, adapt and learn. Humans, no matter how little we expect from them they tend to find a way.

Well, some do...

 

[Jrb1979]

I don’t disagree. I’ve been critical of him for the same reasons. Back in March when he did this interview he also gave an estimate of a return to normal in 2022 in another interview. It’s hard to reconcile those 2 statements.

I don’t think we can say at this point what the numbers need to be and even if the administration put that date or statistic out there it’s almost certain to change. I just look at 10,000 cases a day as a metric we need to reach to get serious about real, meaningful relaxing of restrictions everywhere. Our 7 day daily average of new cases is still over 6X that number so we clearly aren’t there yet, but we can get there pretty soon if enough people take the vaccine. Israel is a good data point to compare against since they are 4-6 weeks ahead of us on vaccinations, have seen almost all of their recent cases from a more contagious variant and have reached an equivalent level of daily cases adjusted for the population size. I do think it’s necessary to factor in hospitalizations and deaths as well.

I think he's doing the best he can. I don't think he's moving goalposts at all. What it is is that everyone wants a set time when things will be dropped and there really is no answer. Most can't live with not knowing.

 

[correcaminos]

I'm against it. Partially for the same reason I'm against ticket scalping... it creates an artificial scarcity through an unneeded middleman (or it makes a real scarcity artificially more scarce). I believe economists call this "rent seeking", even if the appointment hoarder is not personally benefitting from the practice.

And, one of the reasons why many people are hesitant right now is because of the difficulty in obtaining an appointment. Hoarding appointments, no matter the intention, seems counter-productive if we want to get everyone on board.

Appreciate your thoughts. Hesitancy due to thinking it will be too hard (because it is) is real. Some do the "I'll get it when I can get it" and not bother to try. I think that's part of why it bugged me.

Reminds me of a woman here during the great TP crisis of 2020. Before shopping limits were put in place, she seemed to have all Costco, Sam's and Target stock of every brand in her basement. Made a few social media classified posts about how she was willing to be a Good Samaritan and dole out 4-8 rolls at a time. Rightfully got blasted by the rest of the city for having her idea of charity be way misplaced.

I commend people like you, trying to get appointments for people. Maybe you have 5 or 6 friends and you make 10 appointments. Keep the time slots they can, and dump the rest back to original inventory. Keeping them in an effort to look like the savior (general you) you're not when so many likely don't know how to find (general) you rubs me the wrong way.

Yeah that's not much better with the TP. If we had extra (we do always buy at Costco) we were willing to share. Same with wipes. We bought for others when they needed too, but to hoard caused the problem.

In the very beginning here when it opened to elderly not in LTC facilities we did have issues with appointments being canceled due to lack of supply. Back then we more often held a back up. Now it's book an appointment and if you find one closer/better time you just ditch the 1st immediately. I haven't held back ups since Jan. When I make appointments for others I work individually with them. I have gotten in queues and handed those off to others as well so they don't have to be on the phone with me (Cbus Public lets you have a link to click back that has your place). I actually never schedule appointments to transfer even if someone I know is looking but hasn't given me a schedule. It's just how I felt right doing it, but your example isn't bad either.

This marked the first week since Jan I actually wasn't specifically looking for someone. I'm keeping on my lists in case friends of friends need help and to prepare for when 12+ is allowed.

Thanks for thoughts thought. Wanted to make sure I wasn't nuts.

 

[mmascari]

I hope we have learned something on a personal level from this grand experiment and we can reduce the incidence of flu and death from flu going forward.

I doubt it. As evidence, I site the post immediately after yours.

A goal of 100 daily / 36,500 years sounds nice. I don't think we'll get there. My guess is more like 150/54,750 before policy shifts to open up. But, it could even end up at 200/73,000 when "everyone" collectively decides that's good enough.

We're still well above 500/182,500 and that's good enough for some to say we're done.