Yes. That’s right. Of course.
No, all successful (and most countries around the world were more successful than the US) examples worldwide show the opposite - you need a circuit breaker which means much more drastic methods/lockdowns to have a true impact on the outcome. Every time a country tried any variation on letting down/more finetuned approach they failed and the numbers went up dramatically - just you want something to work doesn’t mean it can work and you can’t ignore so much already existing data. You propose doing the same mistakes again and again
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The decision of many jurisdictions to allow restaurants like Merrihue’s to spill out into the roadway provided one of the few bright spots, but now most of the makeshift wood and perspex structures constructed over the summer lie forlorn and empty.
Beloved restaurants have gone out of business all over the city, including a Middle Eastern cafe across the street from Merrihue’s place and a high-end fish restaurant with stunning views over the ocean just a few blocks away next to the Santa Monica Pier.
The pier itself, one of the LA area’s most recognizable landmarks, is still going strong, however, packed with tourists and residents, many of whom are maskless and stay significantly less than 6ft apart. To date, nobody has shown much interest in policing them – much less closing the place down.
To many, it is indicative of inconsistent and illogical applications of anti-Covid strictures by political leaders facing pressure from a variety of unions and industry lobby groups.
Why else, residents say, would a high-risk venture like in-person grocery shopping be allowed to keep going while other, seemingly low-risk ones like children’s outdoor playgrounds have been padlocked and wrapped in police caution tape? How, before the latest emergency, could gyms and nail salons be allowed to open while schools, even ones with large playing fields and outdoor corridors that could host open-air classrooms, remained closed?
Merrihue is typical of this new sort of angry citizen: willing to take his share of pain for the public good but not to suffer needlessly because of what he sees as official corruption and incompetence. Outdoor dining – socially distanced, with waiters wearing face guards – was exactly what public authorities should be encouraging in a pandemic, he argued.
(Edited to add: good to see a link to @FarleyElliott and @matthewkang’s regularly-updated Eater article on restaurants that have closed as a result of COVID.)
Whether these new restrictions will work wonders or hardly move the needle, nobody can say for sure. There are many variables and unknowns, even this far into the pandemic.
“It’s not that scientists and policymakers are idiots. They are coping with an enormous amount of uncertainty,” Pierson said.
In what alternate timeline did the US relay even primarily on epidemiologists and other medical experts?
Are you inspecting it upside-down?
There’s no alternate timeline. Governors and others throughout the country have been making decisions based on input from people almost exclusively in the medical areas. I’ll give you this, that they aren’t necessarily epidemiologists, but they’re largely medical specialists, at least from what I’ve read over the past many months. I haven’t read of a single government person (governor, supervisor, mayor) being advised by a panel that includes even one control theory expert.
As to looking at the curve, I’ll agree that a change in curvature isn’t obvious until perhaps mid-September. OK. The average slope increased from a negative value to near-zero around October 1 or so, and then increased further, as a positive slope, after that. The positive curvature is very definitely obvious by late October, and even clearer as we entered November.
If you follow the major wiggles, the slope is almost linear (negative) on the plot starting Aug 1 until the sudden elbow at the beginning of September, when it abruptly increased to zero for a short time, then turned negative again. However, if you fair a smooth curvefit through the whole section of the plot that you show here (which was a good idea), the average curvature would change from almost zero to a positive value first detectible around the beginning of September, but no later than September 15. A daily plot like this, with all of the oscillations rather than a running average, makes it harder to see trends.
This probably belongs on one of the LA-centric threads, but I haven’t a clue as to which:
Standards for production are way higher than what she was doing on that patio. Doesn’t look like they were eating that great anyway.
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So bottom line . I dont believe there is going to be a end to it . Mask or not . I’ve seen loads of masks being worn . Apparently this is not working. Just a guessing game . Time will tell 10 years from now.
Meanwhile in Asia…
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Are you there now ?
Nonsense. Most Republican officials have been making decisions based on nonsense, and many Democratic officials have been implementing polices based on hearsay, guesswork, or political pressure with little concern for what experts say. Did you read that Wired article I linked to that tracked down the sources of some of the restrictions?
Here’s a seven-day average. ICU occupancy declined by over 50% from the beginning of August until mid-September, then was basically flat around 200 until October 18. There wasn’t enough of an increase to justify any change in policies until early November.
There’s no longer any room for debate about whether masks work.
Seven studies have confirmed the benefit of universal masking in community level analyses: in a unified hospital system, a German city, a U.S. state, a panel of 15 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., as well as both Canada and the U.S. nationally. Each analysis demonstrated that, following directives from organizational and political leadership for universal masking, new infections fell significantly. Two of these studies and an additional analysis of data from 200 countries that included the U.S. also demonstrated reductions in mortality. An economic analysis using U.S. data found that, given these effects, increasing universal masking by 15% could prevent the need for lockdowns and reduce associated losses of up to $1 trillion or about 5% of gross domestic product.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/masking-science-sars-cov2.html
As face masks became mandatory at different points in time across German regions, we can compare the rise in infections in regions with masks and regions without masks. Weighing various estimates, we conclude that 20 days after becoming mandatory face masks have reduced the number of new infections by around 45%.
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That’s like saying “It snowed yesteday, therefore climate change isn’t real” or “I saw a fat person eating a salad, so calories consumed must not affect a person’s weight.”
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If people from different households meet without mask at somebody’s home all the mask wearing in public won’t help much.
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It will significantly reduce the likelihood that those idiots will infect people they don’t know at the grocery store and other public places.
Yes I did, and I’d read that article before. Here’s what I said about Newsom’s latest decree: “the latest heuristic seat-of-the-pants intuitive autocratic decree from Sacramento”. I have no idea who’s advising him or if he makes these things up himself. But of guidance in other places (e.g., other states) the talk is always about medical advisors.
In terms of the curve, I guess I should have said draw a smooth curve through the data, not following the wiggles at all. Do you think the slope could have changed from a negative value to a zero value without a positive curvature before the zero slope part you excerpted? Just print out a plot of the whole curve and draw an eyeball smooth curve though it, and you’ll see when the curvature first became positive. It was in September.
You misunderstood - I am all for masks everywhere but wanted to explain to @Emglow101 why his impression that mask don’t work is wrong if it is not done all the time (including at home if you meet people outside of your immediate household.)
Thank you
Only with 20/20 hindsight can you project an increase on what was actually a decrease followed by a flat period. Take a look at this curve. How soon is it going to go up?
