The lockdown isn’t doing any good because so many people aren’t following it. Ditto on masks and social distancing. Other countries have shown these measures work but only if everyone follows them,
3 Likes
Your point is well taken. People here don’t react to preventative directives the same way as in other countries. Which is why other steps need to be taken. Active measures such as requiring ventilation checks and portable HEPA filtration in small restaurants and other businesses, as well as in every single room in every nursing home, are needed. The state should fund these things. A HEPA filter is like a “face mask” for a business; it reduces the airborne viral contamination before it’s inhaled by others. HEPA filters aren’t 100% effective, but neither are face masks. Hand-held anemometers are very inexpensive and readily available to map airflow patterns.
As to the shortage of ICU facilities, staff, and equipment, preparations for rapidly deploying staffed field hospitals in large spaces like convention centers under emergency conditions should have been ongoing for at least the past six months.
The government has had almost a year to come up with solutions that go beyond crude restrictions and face masks, and we’ve seen none. Many people will continue to gather and won’t wear face masks. Many won’t get vaccinated. Shouting louder at them isn’t going to change this.
In the US, federal, most state, and many local governments have done a terrible job. Places where mask mandates are enforced and respected are doing better.
ICU capacity is currently limited by a lack of qualified personnel. That would take years to address.
Restaurants, businesses etc aren’t the main problems but private gatherings- as long as governments are not willing to enforce restrictions for these gatherings nothing will change - HEPA filters are a lot of money for little overall effect.
And as said before ICU beds are not the real problem but staff which on that level can’t be trained in large numbers in a short time frame.
I don’t know if that’s true. If states and county health departments are publishing statistics on where the infection clusters are, I’m not finding them. Hawaii’s an exception, most recent infections there were at churches. Prisons, rest homes, and workplaces such as meat packing plants and construction sites are frequently reported as sources of infections, as are crowded households with members who work in such locations.
Agree, but nurses that have been brought up to speed for ICU duty – as best as can be accomplished in a short time frame – would still be preferable to triage where some very sick people would otherwise be denied intensive care entirely. IMO.
I generally knew most of what’s in this comprehensive review of everything China, the WHO, the CDC, the Trump administration, and others did wrong, but going through it in detail, step by step … anyway, great work by Lawrence Wright.
2 Likes
This is a very long article but worth the time taken to read. Yes, a comprehensive recap/review – lest we forget.
“Every COVID -positive patient I’ve seen at the hospitals, with one exception, has been Latino or African-American,” he said. “The one white person was an older gentleman whose family member worked in a prison. . . . Everyone else, every single person, works at a food-processing plant in Vallejo, or they work at that Windsor nursing home that had the huge outbreak”—a facility, also in Vallejo, where sixteen residents died—“or they live with someone who works at the food-processing plant or at the nursing home.”
1 Like
Thanks for the excerpt – another long article.
I wish we had more transparent and more detailed data from local governments regarding the origins of outbreaks. My feeling is that restaurants as an industry aren’t on top, especially with outdoor service included – exclusively or not.
And so many Latino and African-Americans – historically less secure financially, and accordingly for a great many staying at home being a non-option – contacting covid; dying. Living in dense housing; homes. And asked to stay there and don’t go out; jobs lost to go out to, anyway.
And those “trapped” in the well-mixed enclosed confines of nursing homes.
So, the unanswerable question is: Did Newsom’s lockdown help reduce cases and prevent deaths?
Or not. Is it possible it made things worse?
Regional lockdowns ending Monday in any event – it says here.
Back we go into the “unlocked” purgatory of the Newsom “purple” zone.
The whiplash going on is stunning.
I see no whiplash in going from regional lockdown to county lockdown.
1 Like
It’s just been one sudden and seemingly impulsive change after another. Over and over.
On/Off/On/Off… Ad nauseum. With little forewarning both ways.
Grant me that?
Certainly Newsom has not been basing his decisions strictly on science. Some county and city health officers have.
That’s for sure. The solid, science-based approach in Washington State, which you posted a link to elsewhere, is light years away from Newsom’s painfully ludicrous and barely “scientific” restriction tiers. In combination with his incessant, impulsive on/off decrees, his approach, in my humble opinion, does more harm than good, oveall.
This continues to be a prototypical example of both a two-edged sword, and of being trapped between a rock and a hard place. There’s no easy – let alone clear – answer.
As with restaurants, though, I do think it would be helpful to put portable HEPA filters on the table in terms of options that might greatly decrease the concentration of airborne virus in classrooms, absent long-term ventilation modifications.
Any portable air filters would need to be positioned so the intakes don’t draw virus particles from one person to another.