If we had an actual leader in Washington, uniform national standards could also have been developed early on. An approach to control the epidemic could have been designed that could be accepted by all states and localities. The approach could have been uniformly implemented, nation-wide. This would have similarly eliminated the incentive to travel between states for the singular purpose of being in a less restrictive one.
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You can play “what if” with this mess all day, but given the lack of leadership from Washington, responsibility devolved to Newsom.
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Yes, you’re right.
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Too true. It should not have been left up to the counties to implement and enforce some of their own criteria. Guidelines and criteria should not be different from county to county. That puts far too much reliance on a non-compliant population to know and understand the rules and regs every place they may need to go.
4th of July weekend generally means a beach get away for the counties of the Inland Empire with the destination either San Diego or Orange County, two counties with significantly different approaches to handling CV-19. And San Diego will see a large influx of Zonies seeking relief from the heat and their own problems with the virus surge.
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In a “small world” connection, I personally know two of the cases coming out of that exposure.
I think our beaches are going to be OK, DD. People know what’s at stake. I hope. (In this case being able to go to the beach – at all.) There will be a lot of enforcement.
I personally think it’s fine if some people from Arizona join us. They’re no more likely to be infected than we ourselves are (or are they?). Just not swarms here in the usual annual locusts.
I’m reminded of a bumper sticker from the 70s: “Welcome to San Diego. Now go Home”.
We can’t control interstate travel unless we return to the Un-United States, with border checkpoints and passports. So there’s going to be some mixing. And some of us “highly infected” Californians (as it seems to others) travel to other states, too.
The idea is to reduce influx density, not totally exclude. IMO
Meanwhile, back in Sweden:
It’s hard to argue against a long-term trend like this. Although I’m sure there will be those who will.
That’s an unusual and unfortunate coincidence. Yes, “Small World Syndrome”.
There’s a high probability that your acquaintances will be fine, just maybe sick for a while.
Strangely though, in my case I still don’t know of anyone, personally or through contacts, that has shared that they have or have had the covid. And as far as I know (no tests), I haven’t had it. Nor my DH.
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One is hospitalized; last I heard they are stable. The other is currently asymptomatic.
It’s a rather rural county, with a lot of the economy based on tourism, hospitality, wineries, etc. Attracts people from the Central Valley and Bay Area, primarily.
My partner lost an elderly family member to the virus.
This should not be paywalled, according to the WaPo.
" As Americans learn to live with the coronavirus, many are struggling with decisions about which practices are safe or risky for them. The Washington Post asked six public health/infectious diseases specialists about their own behavior choices."
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The trend in Sweden doesn’t mean anything in the right context. Eventually every country will have a downward trend but the question is if they did the right approach with the lowest number of possible deaths. If Sweden thinks they did the right approach why is the government starting a commission about what went wrong compared to the much higher deaths rate compared to their neighbors. Your argument is the same Trump would make at the end of the pandemic and saying it in a year - “look, how great the trend is now and I did everything great” and obviously ignoring most likely >1M died until then. Sorry, but your comment is absolute BS and a very similar way how a lot of Republican politicians and gouverneurs have argued now for a long time - selectively using some data out of context and covering up their false narrative.
Graph shows how “nicely” the trend in Sweden worked compared to its neighbors
Nordics: coronavirus deaths 2023 | Statista
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And Sweden looks so good that they compete with the US and the “best” Covid19 pandemic response
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By your argument that Sweden is doing great you seem to think that the US is doing also great
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The absolute numbers of cases in different countries are meaningless by themselves. It’s the number per capita that’s important. Infections per capita in Sweden have leveled off or declined a little lately, but not by a lot. But the number of deaths there has dropped steadily and dramatically. In any event, it was the trend of deaths there that I was pointing to, not new cases. Yes, we’re doing far worse here.
The trend of deaths as numbers mean little without context. All three other scandinavian countries together have more people than Sweden but much less cases and deaths - their individual (and grouped) deaths and infection per capita are significantly better than Sweden - to bring the trend in Sweden as a positive example is ridiculous when they have to have a downtrend because their numbers were and are so high compared to so many countries. (There will be day even the US will have significant downtrend but that doesn’t mean you ever can ignore >130000 deaths and say the trend looks great). And the infection per capita in Sweden are still on the same bad level as the US - Sweden is an example how not to do it
So now I read that Tamicov will come out way before the vaccine, in the fall.
Right.
They’ll have to discover it before they can test, approve, and manufacture it.
Yes. Exactly. A lot of blathering about that, too.
I just don’t understand why so many people keep raising public expectations of an early arrival of a truly effective “tamicov”, let alone a vaccine that will be readily available to all in the early months of next year – and is tacitly assumed by the general public will be 100% effective.
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No vaccine is 100% effective. Two doses of polio vaccine are 90% effective. From 2009-18 the seasonal flu vaccine averaged 44% effective.
The herd immunity threshold for Covid-19 is unknown, but for the sake of argument say it’s 70%. If by the time a vaccine is available 20% of the population has been infected, a vaccine only needs to be 50% effective.
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I understand the general direction of your reasoning, but there are two glitches. First, it’s been estimated that only 37% (let’s say 40%) of the population will actually get the covid vaccine when it’s available. Second, the 40% who do get the shot will include the (reasonable) 20% who are already immune in your example. That means 8% (40% of 20%) will have received “redundant” protection from the shot, leaving the remaining 32% to potentially add to the “herd” – not all 40%. If the vaccine were 100% effective, that 32% would add to the 20% already immune, giving 52% of the population protection at that point. But that’s far from the necessary (reasonable) 70% immune in your example for herd immunity. But of course, as you said, the vaccine won’t be 100% effective. Suppose it’s 85% effective, which would be pretty good. Then of the 32% potential new additions to the herd, only 27% would actually get immunity from the shot. Adding this new 27% to the 20% already immune (from having had and recovered from the covid) gives only 47% total immunity in the population, after the vaccine with 85% effectiveness is available and fully distributed and administered (which is another story).
The annual flu shot has the same problem. Only about 50% of the population gets it each year. But in addition to that, each year a good “guess” has to be made about which variation or variations of the flu are the most likely to be going around, leading to the relatively low vaccine effectiveness of 44%, the average that you cited.
What am I missing?
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