Covid-19 NON DANCE debate

[raindance]

Also, Covid-19 has proven it's ability to overwhelm local health systems (see Italy among others). So we are trying to slow the spread (locally, state wide, nationally, internationally) to reduce the infection rate so that the medical systems can handle the patient load. We'd like our ER's and hospitals to still be able to accommodate heart attack patients, car accident victims, cancer patients, and all the other things they usually are handling during "normal times" through and after this new disease outbreak.

We are also trying to prevent this virus from becoming established where it hits every year, like the flu.

 

[ProgressNotPerfection]

St. Louis city officials on Thursday declared a public health emergency. Dr. Fredrick Echols, St. Louis Health Department director, banned gatherings of more than 1,000 people, except for church services.

Churches are exempted??? Wow. I guess maybe congregants don't take communion at any St. Louis churches, ever, at any service, at any time of day. Or sit near each other in the pews or shake hands or hug. Or touch hymnals or Bibles or the Book of Common Prayer (oops...my Episcopalian is showing). And maybe there aren't any high-risk church members, at all, anywhere.

Anyway, it's good to know we all have a safe place to go. I didn't realize that the medieval practice of seeking sanctuary in a church was a legitimate medical solution, but I guess I was wrong. Huh.

ETA: (I'm sorry. This is unnecessary sarcasm. I'm very grumpy today, like everyone else I know.)

 

[Warren J. Dew]

Churches are exempted??? Wow. I guess maybe congregants don't take communion at any St. Louis churches, ever, at any service, at any time of day. Or sit near each other in the pews or shake hands or hug. Or touch hymnals or Bibles or the Book of Common Prayer (oops...my Episcopalian is showing). And maybe there aren't any high-risk church members, at all, anywhere.

This is one of the things I'm concerned about: those in power using the crisis as an excuse to discriminate against disfavored groups, but not against their own favored groups. The discrimination against "at risk" groups that include "older people" also raises civil rights concerns.

One of the reasons I don't mind the school and government building shutdowns in my city is that at least the government is volunteering to take the hit, rather than targeting other people and groups to take the hit.

 

[Warren J. Dew]

Even as I wrote my post, I was wondering if you would pull on that pedantic thread. You have not disappointed!

Hey, if you knew your argument was wrong, why make it?

Sure, COVID-19 is like a bad flu year. A really, really, really bad flu year, like 1918: the infamous Spanish Flu pandemic.

Actually, the example of the Spanish flu contradicts a couple of your arguments, as I'll explain below.

First, for the record, the Spanish Flu was bad because (1) it happened in the wake of a World War with drastically reduced ability to respond to any crisis, and (2) it happened before the invention of antibiotics, which greatly reduce the mortality from secondary infections. Neither of those is relevant today.

I'll bet you knew that already - but then, why bring it up?

First, partial immunity. There are lots of flu strains, but many of them are similar enough that an individual's immune system can fight effectively if they've had a different strain of flu before. COVID-19 is too novel for that.

Flu strains are similar to the extent that they are all influenza virus, yes. However, Covid-19 is a coronavirus, other strains of which cause common colds. To the extent that partial immunity is relevant, it's as relevant to the Covid-19 strain of coronavirus as it is to the currently popular strain of the influenza virus.

Also, to the extent partial immunity is relevant to the flu, it should have helped protect us against the Spanish Flu, yet you argued that was a particularly bad epidemic.

Second, means of mortality. The flu kills indirectly, by weakening the immune system and creating risks for coinfection, and it is the combination that kills. From what we've seen so far, it seems that COVID-19 can kill all by itself.

Again, influenza's facilitation of secondary infections is part of why the Spanish Flu was so deadly, so that's more an argument for flu being worse, rather than "less bad". Antibiotics have lessened that argument, but not eliminated it.

Covid-19 does appear to act more directly, rather than through facilitation of secondary infection. However, this does not mean that it's worse, just different. In particular, deaths from Covid-19 are highly concentrated in the oldest age categories, while flu can also kill young children. You could even argue that this makes the flu worse, from the standpoint of lost years of life.

Third, experience. Every doctor and hospital everywhere knows exactly how to test for flu and how to treat infections, and they have all the supplies they need on hand for both. Neither of these are in place (yet) for COVID-19.

That would suggest that the risk from Covid-19 is exaggerated, since with every passing day more is learned about it and how to deal with it. That said, testing is available, if not yet instantaneous, and we already know some forms of commonly available treatment, like oxygen and ventilators.

 

[Warren J. Dew]

Also, Covid-19 has proven it's ability to overwhelm local health systems (see Italy among others). So we are trying to slow the spread (locally, state wide, nationally, internationally) to reduce the infection rate so that the medical systems can handle the patient load. We'd like our ER's and hospitals to still be able to accommodate heart attack patients, car accident victims, cancer patients, and all the other things they usually are handling during "normal times" through and after this new disease outbreak.

I agree in the general case. And for slowing the spread, we don't have to shut everything down; in fact, I suspect just closing public schools would be sufficient. We don't have to shut down dance competitions and other one time events.

We are also trying to prevent this virus from becoming established where it hits every year, like the flu.

I doubt that's possible. A better hope might be that Covid-19 will, as it mutates, become less virulent and fade into the background of other coronavirus based seasonal colds.

 

[fiesta0618]

@Warren J. Dew, I do enjoy debating you, but not about this.

We don't have to have theoretical arguments about how bad coronavirus can get, because Italy is a perfect example. The response you advocate seems pretty much the same as Italy's response.

Moreover, my recent posts were not written by me, but by my wife, who works at a research hospital in Boston. She's done debating this, and I'm not well equipped to do so, so that's that, I guess.

I'm going to trust her judgment on this one.

 

[Warren J. Dew]

We don't have to have theoretical arguments about how bad coronavirus can get, because Italy is a perfect example. The response you advocate seems pretty much the same as Italy's response.

That mischaracterizes my position. I'm advocating something closer to South Korea's response. Italy failed to do the containment part at all, which Massachusetts and most of the US seem to be doing effectively. Then Italy used the same drastic and to some extent counterproductive measures that I'm arguing against.

South Korea took action early, as we are doing, and the actions they took were less drastic.

Moreover, my recent posts were not written by me, but by my wife, who works at a research hospital in Boston. She's done debating this, and I'm not well equipped to do so, so that's that, I guess.

She's a dancer, she should get her own account. Then she could discuss dancing too!

 

[scullystwin42]

@Warren J. Dew, I do enjoy debating you, but not about this.

We don't have to have theoretical arguments about how bad coronavirus can get, because Italy is a perfect example. The response you advocate seems pretty much the same as Italy's response.

Moreover, my recent posts were not written by me, but by my wife, who works at a research hospital in Boston. She's done debating this, and I'm not well equipped to do so, so that's that, I guess.

I'm going to trust her judgment on this one.

upvote.

 

[ProgressNotPerfection]

@Warren J. Dew, I do enjoy debating you, but not about this.

And I do enjoy reading y'all's debates, but not about this.

 

[scullystwin42]

Huh, the catholic churches here in chicago have cancelled schools and Mass. Which i thought was a good thing, i hadn't heard about religious exemptions.

I hate all of this too, and it's directly impacting my family. But at the same time, i continue to hope that this will help keep our health systems from being overwhelmed.

And i hope certain people, if it does manage to prevent major outbreaks and overstressed care systems, don't act like all of this was an over-reaction in the first place. If it works, then it was the right reaction, not an overreaction.

 

[scullystwin42]

And I do enjoy reading y'all's debates, but not about this.

yeah that's why i hit the big ol ignore button.

 

[ProgressNotPerfection]

And i hope certain people, if it does manage to prevent major outbreaks and overstressed care systems, don't act like all of this was an over-reaction in the first place. If it works, then it was the right reaction, not an overreaction.

THIS!

 

[Warren J. Dew]

And i hope certain people, if it does manage to prevent major outbreaks and overstressed care systems, don't act like all of this was an over-reaction in the first place. If it works, then it was the right reaction, not an overreaction.

If less drastic measures succeed elsewhere, it was an overreaction.

 

[David_In_CA]

South Korea took action early, as we are doing, and the actions they took were less drastic.

(emphasis mine)

I think that this is the critical part where you are wrong.

 

[DanceMentor]

If less drastic measures succeed elsewhere, it was an overreaction.

It's difficult to find any place that is not seeing doubling of cases every 2-4 days, except for those places that did massive shut downs (South Korea and China). Cool thing about South Korea is they appear to have nearly completely turned it around in under 30 days.