This graph showing how many days other countries are behind Italy's infection rate is quite alarming [1].
Especially the close alignment of most of the countries.
Edit:
Sorry, I didn't include the original source. I had taken a screenshot and couldn't find the original article. But the original data is from Mark J Handley [2] who is (non-medical) Professor of Networked Systems and part-time Roboticist at UCL. And the article I took the picture from is at [3] (I don't normally read the Daily Mail, I promise).
The bit of good news which isn't entirely clear from a log-scale chart of total number of cases, is that today's number of new cases in Italy is down significantly.
New Cases: [1]
March 6 - 640
March 7 - 1145
March 8 - 2314
March 9 - 1797
March 10 - 977
Alternative Data Source: [2]
March 6 - 640
March 7 - 1145
March 8 - 1326
March 9 - 1598
March 10 - 529
In perhaps two more days we can say definitively that growth rate has peaked in Italy.
The comments I quoted say that today's Lombardy update is partial - deaths are counted in, but total cases not yet. That's apparently as of 3-4 hours ago, told in the Italian TV just after the numbers report.
I.e. the first PDF you link doesn't have complete numbers per official government admission.
A few countries look like they have reached an inflection point (see number of daily new cases going back for example) but that could be a problem of testing (or lack thereof).
If I'm to believe random comments on /r/CoronaVirus by people claiming to be working in healthcare (or related to such people), in Italy, they're not testing everyone in ICUs anymore, as there's little point or time (high prevalence of disease, completely saturated medical system). This implies the number of cases there is going to be underreported.
Also note RE today's Italy stats - they're only partial, Lombardy (i.e. the region with most cases) isn't counted in yet.
Anaesthetist Jason van Schoor from UCL tweeted a rather long chain [1] from his friend in Italy and the situation seems to be indeed very, very bad.
The pressure on the healthcare system from the virus seems to be simply massive and the system cannot keep up nor maintain a level of care for everyone who enters the system.
For those who haven't seen it and don't want to read the whole thread (though they should!), the IMO most salient part:
5/ Patients above 65 or younger with comorbidities are not even assessed by ITU, I am not saying not tubed, I’m saying not assessed and no ITU staff attends when they arrest. Staff are working as much as they can but they are starting to get sick and are emotionally overwhelmed.
6/ My friends call me in tears because they see people dying in front of them and they con only offer some oxygen. Ortho and pathologists are being given a leaflet and sent to see patients on NIV. PLEASE STOP, READ THIS AGAIN AND THINK.
There are still a ton of people who still think that it is just like the flu... Talked to a few people and i basically lost hope that we will handle the right way (until it is too late) i cant wrap my head around it.. Two countries went in lock down... Becuae it is just like the flu? Yeahhhh.... Right.
Technically it is like a flu but I don't think people realize how bad flus can be. The 1918 one killed about 2.7% of the population which would be 200 million with the present population. Hopefully covid19 won't be that bad.
I totally understand the reaction is totally different from the flu.
Here's my question: If we had real-time dashboards and 24/7 news coverage of every flu case, hospitalization, and flu death... would it look much different? I think it would actually look much worse.
Well, yes? When was the last time a flu DDoSed medical systems of two countries to the point people are routinely refused treatment and die in the ICU corridors?
The WHO estimates that the 2009 H1N1 "swine flu" killed ~250,000. [1]
Reported case mortality of H1N1 during the pandemic was similarly upwards of ~5% in some countries, [2] although later retrospective studies found that H1N1 was actually less lethal than a typical flu season (0.01-0.08%). [3]
ICU utilization was very significant in some countries, e.g. 30 people per million admitted to the ICU [4]. (Italy is currently at 14 per million.)
Hospitals definitely had to adopt "surge management" although in 2009 it often had as much to due with managing fear and panic as it did with getting people access to ventilators. [5]
Life Care Center in Washington had 120 residents a week ago. Now 19 of them are dead.[1] Does that sound like "just the flu?"
There's plenty of evidence that this is much worse than the flu. R0 is >2, compared to 1.3. Mortality rate seems to be at least 5x higher. And those are low bounds. And this is all adding to the regular load on hospitals. It has observably overloaded hospital capacity in China and Italy.
You're right but it could be people are getting over-reacting and thus causing more panic and more buying. It is more worry some economically speaking than medically.
Relative population only becomes important once a significant portion of the population is infected. Until that time you'd expect a roughly exponential increases from the original outbreak.
Testing is very limited in many countries. In Switzerland for example, testing is only done for very limited groups of persons with severe and for some medical staff. Broad testing never took place.
I used logarithmic scale and normalized per million people, so despite the ugliness the exponential growth is quite clear, even in countries with relatively few cases.
Excellently informative graph! I had been meaning to plot something just like it but got distracted by other things. Do you have a source for the data and/or the graph?
Here's the data provided by Johns Hopkins University; they collect WHO and CSSE reports. That's what you see on the popular JHU coronavirus map (though the repository is often few hours behind the map).
It's so nice to see someone who has the qualifications explain so clearly why the efforts we're making are important. I live in Seattle and I have a hard time explaining to my mother why me working from home and avoiding public events is important right now. She just keeps stating that everyone is going to get it eventually and it won't matter.
I am facing a similar issue with my aging parents. They are both 70+. They both get respiratory issues every year. My Mom in particular is convinced she is healthy and doesn't need to worry about it. I understand why she is resistant towards the notion that she is vulnerable (I have similar issues confronting my own aging, and I am roughly 40 years younger), but it still pains me to discuss this with them. I lose my patience, which isn't helpful. I am growing more and more fearful that they will put themselves at risk, become infected, and then not survive when the hospitals are overwhelmed.
If anyone has any ideas about how to communicate about this with them, I am all ears.
30 min/weekday a science journalist talks to Christian Drosten, a world-renowned expert on Coronaviruses, who explains things in a very concise manner. Yesterdays episode was „We have to protect the elderly“, where Drosten talked about the high risk for the sick and elderly and trying to fully get this point across to his own father over the weekend. He also mentioned that we should work on hopefully achieving a broader societal awareness of this over the next week or two.
I talked to my mother and father a bit first, sent my mother a link to this episode and told her to put me on speakerphone. We then listened to it together and discussed it a bit afterwards. I found this to be really helpful.
My mother was in denial until 2 weeks ago, when she went a bit hysterical for a day and has been concerned (but okay) since. My father was mostly in denial until today. He also bailed out soon after the podcast ended, because it was a bit much for him. But overall he took it quite well and is taking it more seriously now.
Overall I am very happy with the way this went. Sorry, this isn‘t very helpful if you don‘t speak German. But maybe you are able to find a similar thing in your native language.
Your self-awareness, self-accountability, and emotional IQ to ascertain the likely source of her resistance are all extremely admirable.
It sounds like you need to convince her of two things: (1) she is vulnerable; and (2) she must change.
How about focusing on #2?
Instead of asking her to change for herself, perhaps suggest this could protect friends and others around her who may be more vulnerable. An appropriate analogy may be secondhand smoke. Maybe her lungs are resilient enough to withstand the toxic effects of smoking, but what about the lungs of all her loved ones?
Hopefully others can chime in with better ideas. I hope you and your family, and we all, can remain safe and healthy during this crisis.
"If anyone has any ideas about how to communicate about this with them, I am all ears. "
First of all, respect them. Even if they might be wrong, they are adults, who have the right, to make their own decisions. You can stress the point, how worried you are and provide them with a good article etc., that in this case some caution is advised, but try not to push them.
Also, eventually everybody has to die. When you are 70+ it can happen any moment. I can understand to not want my last years to live in fear of every disease there is. And there are plenty of them, which are especially dangerous for old people, because .. they are older and weaker.
By appealing to pathos aka emotions. Most intelligent people resent this style of persuasion.
Your parents are on death's doorstep as is everyone in their later years. It may be more meaningful to figure out what experiences you'd like to share with them in the limited time you have left instead of trying to prolong their existence at the cost of straining the relationship.
In other words don't put off whatever you might potentially regret not having done if they were to pass away suddenly - with each passing day, the inevitable conclusion every human being shares only draws closer.
I think the most important thing is to ask CLEARLY for what you want. Do you have a specific list of social distancing practices you would like them to implement? Do you want them to stockpile supplies? How many supplies? What is on your shopping list?
"Please take this seriously" is not a request. It's barely even english. It also contains an out of context judgement which you should also try to avoid. Use objective observations instead. So rather than saying "I think you're irresponsible", tell them the actual concrete things they said or did, that led you to that assessment. Something like "I notice you rode the bus during peak hours five times last week." is an example of an objective observation, devoid of judgement or criticism.
What medical authorities are saying (in the EU) is that while widespread contagion is inevitable, we don't want everybody to get infected at the same time, because that would overwhelm medical resources and prevent serious cases from getting treated properly. Therefore it seems that the idea is not so much to stop the virus but to just slow it down.
I am sure it has crossed many people's minds, but what if I want to get it before the medical systems are taxed? Like get it before the peak. I am sure it's very bad thinking, but what are some solid points against such thinking?
Regardless of the merits from an individually selfish standpoint, this kind of behavior would be extremely anti-social.
The overriding public health concern is slowing the spread as much as possible. Even if in the asymptote the same number of people are infected, spreading that burden out over a protracted time period minimizes overloading on the healthcare system.
If even a small percent of the population became "bug-chasers", it would supercharge the rate of transmission. Especially because the incubation period is so long. The same unhygienic behavior of trying to acquire the disease, would very likely also spread the disease by the asymptomatic.
If you put any ethical weight on the consideration of other human beings, then the very minor plausible individuals benefits are more than outweighed by the massive social harm.
It may be too late for that, in the same sense that all the folks who chase the hot startup idea that just appeared in the news are too late. There's about a 3-week lag time between contracting the virus and needing serious medical care. The folks in the ICU now generally contracted it in early February. With a doubling time of roughly 4 days, there'll be 5 doublings = 32x increase of cases in that time frame. It's very likely that if you contract it now, by the time you need ICU support so will everyone else, and you'll be left to fend for yourself in a hallway while in serious respiratory distress.
OK so you think the early "slots" are better. Maybe they are. If you manage to get in slot n anyone you infect will be forced to take n+1 (perhaps not as good) and the exponentially increasing set of people _they_ infect will be forced to take n+2, n+3, ...
Now there are a lot more people in those time slots all competing for the same doctors and hospital beds, etc.
Congratulations, you made the curve a little less flat :(
If anything, experience from China has shown that the early slots are not better. The mortality % has gotten better over time as they've figured out what works, what doesn't, and how to properly manage the disease. For example, there's some retrovirals being given now that appear to be successful to some degree. That wasn't known in the early progression of the illness.
Odds are decent an even more effective treatment will be found in the coming months, and if you can stave off your infection date till then you'll be better off (which of course presumes that you will get the virus at all, which is far from a given).
You're assuming you would get it no matter what: you might not, especially given the precautions that are being taken. And there's a non-zero chance of dying. Assuming you're in a low risk age group from 20-50, you have, at minimum, between a 1 in 500 to a 1 in 250 chance of dying. Sure, you're much less likely to die than not die, but those still aren't odds I'd play willingly.
If everyone thought like you and tried to get it early, then the hospitals would be overrun and you'd be no better off. Also, it's possible for you to get it again after recovery [1], so it may not even help you at all.
The more people that think like that, the more that type of thinking increases. Like panic buying inducing more panic buying. So it might start small, but could easily balloon quite fast.
According to top health officials in Norway (as seen on a TV program last night), reinfection is not likely, at least in the short run. And the Japanese case apparently is based on a misunderstanding, not an actual reinfection.
Over the long haul, reinfection is quite possible, since immunity wears off with time. It is not considered unlikely that this disease will be with us forever. In that case, vaccination will perhaps be our best tool to manage it.
That's actually not a bad strategy in a selfish sense, assuming that the virus grows otherwise normally. Obviously, the problem is that if everyone did it we'd be looking at the apocalyptic worst case extreme! Everyone would be sick simultaneously and have to endure the virus with no health care resources at all.
The more practical problem is that the growth is exponential, so the window between "no one has it, it's safe to get it now" and "everyone has it, mass quarantine" is just a few weeks. Add to that that the virus has a 5-6 day incubation period and it basically doesn't work. Statistically, by the time you know someone sick from whom you can infect yourself, the number of people with still-incubating cases (who are AHEAD of you in the "queue"!) is probably enough to overwhelm health care facilities anyway.
I want to get it late - ideally I can hold off long enough for an effective vaccine and never get it. Lacking that, maybe at least someone will discover a better treatment. Maybe in a few months we will discover some existing rabies drug also helps this treatment, or some other such thing. There are also some other anti-virals in development, maybe one of them will turn out to be somewhat useful. However it will take time for doctors to figure that out. I'd rather they learn on someone else.
Even with that there seem bureaucratic type delays till it gets used. I just took some as a prophylactic which is totally unproven but as a clinical treatment it seems to work well in trials.
> Don’t be that person. It might not be about you but it is everyone’s problem. Don’t be careless in the hopes you get sick when you can “avoid the rush.” There is zero benefit to individuals or the population to getting sick early in the pandemic. You would be putting the lives of others at risk. It is not just that people are dying, but how they are dying. To say nothing of the physical trauma, emotionally speaking this is the opposite of a “good death”. People are dying alone, quarantined from those they love.
> Early reports are that people who recover develop antibodies that provide immunity if they are infected with the same strain again. However, this is great news for vaccine development, so flatten the curve and wait it out.
> This can get very serious; one person described the pain as feeling like her lungs were being put through a pasta maker. 10% of cases require ICU care and mechanical ventilation. Even if autopsy reports from China have been misrepresented or overstated, there is a possibility of long term or permanent lung damage if you do get sick and recover. There are lot of gaps in the information about lung damage, mostly because everyone qualified to let the public know exactly what is going on is already very busy saving lives and putting their own at risk.
If you get infected, you put others at risk of getting infected, no matter how perfectly you may think you've isolated yourself. Unless you have a clean room level setup somewhere, you're making yourself a reservoir of viral load for others to catch.
There are also two strains, one more aggressive than the other. I would imagine that getting the weaker strain out there ahead of the bad strain may be useful.
That wasn’t completely confirmed and may result from drawing conclusions from biased data. Also it doesn’t matter unless you can reliably get infected with the weaker strain.
About half of exposures have no symptoms at all, about half of the remaining ones have mild cold symptoms (fever, sore throat, dry cough), and then a further 30% of the remainder might have nasty symptoms (deep cough, walking pneumonia) that don't require hospitalization. The remaining 20% of symptomatic cases (10% of total) get pneumonia that's bad enough to require hospitalization, and half of those require ventilators and ICU beds. With good medical care and no pre-existing conditions about 90% of those patients recover, without medical care virtually all of them die.
Untreated, it's basically like playing Russian Roulette. 5 out of 6 times, nothing bad happens. 1 out of 6, you die. The disparity in outcomes is probably what makes this so insidious: a lot of folks look at the numeric outcomes for healthy people in the presence of ventilators and ICUs and reasonably think "Oh, I have a 1 in 500 chance of dying, it's no big deal". Medical professionals look at the exponential infection curve, the capacity to overwhelm health care systems, and the number of patients requiring hospitalization and think "this is the scariest disease I've ever seen".
Right, although the news out of Italy is that young healthy adults are ending up in the "bad pneumonia, need hospitalization" bucket nearly (but not quite) as much as older patients. They just have a much better prognosis with hospital interventions, because once they're ventilated or on oxygen for a while their immune system can reliably clear the virus, while with 80+ year olds or folks with pre-existing conditions it starts running amuck and causes ARDS or multiple organ failure. Overload the hospital system and the death rate jumps for healthy young adults as well - this happened in Wuhan and is now happening in Italy and Iran, and is why you see videos on the Internet of middle-aged adults dead in their bed from coronavirus.
Some reports are showing that a little under half of those infected get no symptoms at all. Otherwise it can be anything from mild cold symptoms all the way to deadly pneumonia. That's from what I've been reading in the UK anyway.
Basically, I saw that this domain was available and saw the increasing talk of “flattening the curve” on Twitter. I grabbed it and wanted to do something helpful, like post just the pic of the tall and flat graph that was making the rounds, because I loved how simple the visual was, and how powerful the point it made. I thought at least people could share the concept easily.
But then someone shared Julie’s post, which was living on a gdoc at the time, and even that was struggling with the amount of readers... and was very much not an easily shareable link.
So I reached out and asked if she’d like to have it live at flattenthecurve.com, and promised to give her a login to update and add more info etc.
She said yes and I got the site live in half a day mostly spent reformatting the gdoc into WP.
I’m thrilled that the domain is really living up to its best use!
So this person who not only provides their prior work history but also links to primary source material in multiple places through the whole list, AND includes comments about where things are still unsure or developing, somehow _doesn't_ meet your criteria?
I'd think that compared to the vast majority of material posted anywhere, this discussion is of much higher quality and veracity.
... how do you judge the nice explanation? Why wouldn't you want to hear from someone who studied/works in something over someone who is a random observer?
And who determines what a "nice explanation" is, and what is or isn't backed by science? Another expert that you then have to trust?
When dealing with technical topics that require deep study, unless you're some kind of genius with an abundance of free time, it is impossible to judge the quality of someones argument without you yourself also being a mini-expert in the same field.
>My comments are about how a lot of people tend to put the person ( + credentials) before the soundness of their arguments.
Ok fair enough. So what is the argument that you feel was not sound? And who said that they believed the argument was sound because of 'credentialism'?
I don't know what a "well documented" philosophy book has to do with anything. That doesn't get you anywhere close to understanding deeply technical topics. Today's cutting edge science is deeply technical and you cannot gain knowledge simply by reasoning about it. You have to be an expert yourself to even begin to comprehend complex topics. A good educator can simplify a topic and make it approachable - like I suppose what Neil deGrasse Tyson does, but you are no closer to actually grasping the math or other details without going to grad school ... or putting in an equal amount of work at home using the library and self-study.
But you said you wanted to hear from an expert. How do you imagine a non-expert can select an expert without indulging in something that could easily be called credentialism by a cranky internet commenter?
There are all sorts of people giving good explanations on almost any topic. Only some of them know what they're talking about. And there are plenty of experts who aren't very good at explaining, as they have spent their time and energy on gaining expertise.
So your heuristic easily leads to believing all sorts of nonsense. Antivaxxers, for example, frequently point to glib people with plausible-sounding explanations whose flaws are not at all obvious to the casual observer.
Unfortunately, the medical field is one place where credentialism is mandated and good for society. I would never let a "self-trained" doctor anywhere near me the way we accept bootcamp developers.
And for what it's worth, I'm incredibly wary of bootcamp developers too. I've seen too many terrible ones to not assume the worst without good proof otherwise.
Yes, but the training ends up converting to a license or title if you've completed it properly, and we judge whether or not a person is competent in that field based on whether or not they hold that title or license. For example, when quoting experts they're qualified as,"so-and-so is a board certified X," which is credentialism. But we have belief that the credential required training and knowledge, and that it was accredited by a board/panel of trained experts. But we trust those experts to be adjudicators of expertise because of their credentials. It's turtles all the way down.
I didn't call a "Board certified Physician" as credentialism. The previous commenter did. I never brought medicine to support my case against credentialism.
Now you are bringing in your own narrative to a dictionary definition. My case is that the parent comment seems to put credentials before a valid argument, which is what I am against. Credentials are not a proxy for a sound argument.
Listen, if you're going to cut off quotes to make up an imagined problem then you're not contributing. The very next words are "so clearly" which hits your "nice explanation" part.
Listen, I'm going to tell you this because feedback is important and this is for your benefit: low brow dismissals are easy. You can always make up an imagined way to disagree with someone and it is almost always useless.
Here's an example of one of these lowbrow dismissals with your comment:
> "nice explanation"
> Why does the explanation have to be nice? I'd rather have someone tell me the truth rudely rather than tell me lies kindly.
Behold the incredible worthlessness of that response! It is fucking idiotic. People who interpret things literally are not talented, they are crippled.
> Relative to Other Countries, US Labor and Healthcare Policies are a Perfect Storm for Pandemics
> Zero universal guaranteed paid sick leave [1]
The United States of America in the same list as India, North Korea, South Korea, Somalia, Angola, Liberia, and Guinea-Bissau. Some of these countries are poor or low income. The USA isn't one of them though. I'd be ashamed of my country.
In The Netherlands, an entire [large] province (North Brabant) has been ordered to stay home if they have anything resembling illness. People are asked to work from home. Children can't go to school. Still, working from home is better than nothing.
Also, some people are in quarantine. The people who have COVID-19 but otherwise don't have it severe can stay home, in quarantine, instead of in the hospital.
One thing I wish I knew way earlier is that COVID-19 victims rarely suffer from a runny nose. I recently got it from Our World In Data [2], it was linked here on HN. I did not read about this in our local media, sadly.
This is a false statement. There are 12 states which require paid sick leave, amounting to 30% of the population [1]. Federal employees are guaranteed paid sick leave days [2]. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 61% of workers have paid sick leave, 78% have paid vacations, (80%/90% in large employers with 500 or more workers) [3].
That whole section is just political garbage. There's plenty of reasons to believe that businesses will take precautions themselves to limit the spread of the virus internally, which includes offering paid sick leave to encourage people to be extra careful.
It is a literally true statement. Universal means covering everybody. That some slices of the population have it in no way contradicts that. Indeed, most of your numbers prove that sick leave in the US is not universal.
Being charitable, it's not actually binary, because sick leave has both a quantity axis and an accessibility access. The "universal" qualifier makes the accessibility axis binary. There's still a big difference between universal 1-day-per-year paid sick leave and universal 30-day-per-year paid sick leave or what have you.
Wouldn't this mean it is an impossible goal since unemployed people don't have it. This might sound a bit snarky, but I am being serious because unemployed does account for people who are working under the radar, often through illegal means. An illegal sex worker, panhandler, or someone doing odd jobs and taking straight cash payments are likely not covered even in places that would be said to have universal paid sick leave.
But that doesn't covered the sick leave portion of the claim, and in general unemployment benefits do not cover everyone who is unemployed (such as children, which is another group who may be working under the radar). It would effectively require a UBI, and even then it wouldn't qualify as being sick leave.
This is the problem with reducing it to a fully binary clarification where everything but fully true is false. 99.999% is so much easier to hit than 100%.
I'm afraid I don't understand what "sick leave" for children or people already receiving benefits would mean.
Are you trying to make an actual point about real-world responses to pandemics? Or is this just some sort of language-is-imperfect cul-de-sac you're in? If the latter, please leave me out of it.
Children work. Be it mowing a yard, working on a farm, or illegally violating labor laws and having an actual job. In some places, even in first world countries, there are children who are working under the radar (children of undocumented immigrants or children who are undocumented immigrants being an example). These children do not get paid sick leave, and thus if the standard for 'universal paid sick leave' is 'everyone gets it', then nowhere meets that standard. If you make your definition require perfection to meet it, then it won't be met. You set the standard on being literally universal a few comments ago, and I'm just showing that nowhere meets that standard.
> Or is this just some sort of language-is-imperfect cul-de-sac you're in?
Come now, have you forgotten when you said the following?
>It is a literally true statement. Universal means covering everybody. That some slices of the population have it in no way contradicts that.
Please do not suggest me being in some language-is-imperfect cul-de-sac when you were the one driving.
Or even just someone that is self employed. There's no federal law requiring them to have an agreement with themselves about what they do on days that they don't feel well.
I realize that this sounds like a really stupid comment to make.
I think it is a great counter example given the word play people are engaging in. It is a silly example, but if a silly example fits, then it suffices to show the standard itself is also silly.
It seems a variant of reductio ad absurdum but I'm not fully certain it qualifies.
Actually my point was that focusing on situations where there is not an employee-employer relationship is a tedious digression. Of course only employed people get sick time from their employer, that is what it is.
This seems a bit difficult to define to begin with (look at the cases with countries deciding differently for gig workers at places like Uber), and it doesn't seem to have been a qualified exception to the universal that the original comment called out.
It also achieves much the same effect as the very original article in that it allows a sort of propaganda by being able to say no countries in Europe have universal sick leave. And being able to technically make such statements, be their reasoning extremely tedious or not, is the topic at hand.
If I may nitpick your response: the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is from 2009. 2018 data suggests 71% of workers receive paid sick leave. [1]
BUT, the data is highly skewed if you look at income. [also 1] The worst paid workers also have much less paid sick leave. Only 45% of the lowest 25% income group do. According to the BLS there were 130 million workers in 2019, thus leaving roughly 15 million people (130 x 0.25 x 0.45) without paid sick leave and likely without the financial means to go on unpaid sick leave or get medical help (like testing).
Also, the average paid sick leave varies between 6-10 (working) days. Suggested quarantine is 14 days. [2] Only 3% of workers have sick days "as needed". [3] This supports the argument that these circumstances make matters worse. I tend to agree to the general argument.
Does this count people who receive PTO that made be used as paid sick leave? If so, I'm not sure it should be counted.
A person who doesn't have any paid sick leave nor PTO they can use it place of it has to take a sick day doesn't get paid for that day. One way of thinking about it is that they do get paid, but then have to give up pay equal to what they get (and all this is calculated before tax purposes). A person who has to use a PTO day that isn't only for sick leave is giving up something with a near value equal to a day of pay. In most cases, any benefits or the like are not cut for either person, meaning they still receive some level of pay when you look at the averaged out of those benefit values over the day.
This may feel like a needless distinction, but I think it matters because when a person without paid sick leave or PTO is sick they have to weigh staying home against not making money, while a person who doesn't have paid sick leave but is allowed to use PTO has to weigh staying home against losing a day of PTO that they can't use for vacation. A person with true sick leave has no such calculation, sick leave they can only use when they are sick means they aren't giving up anything. Well, there is an argument to be made for the day's worth of experience and other such matters are still loss, which for some positions can be enough to choose to work even when there is paid sick leave.
> Also, the average paid sick leave varies between 6-10 (working) days. Suggested quarantine is 14 days.
All the more reason to treat coronavirus as an exception that needs to be considered, as-needed, business by business. Or state-by-state, or county-by-county. Just because something like coronavirus happens every so often doesn't mean we need a 1-size fits all policy for every year and occasion.
I think businesses should be encouraged to play a role in helping limit the spread of the virus, but if everyone just decides they need to take 2 weeks off because of the cold, that's going to cause some economic troubles. Maybe something like that is needed this year, but for every year, that would be excessive and not help.
There's plenty of reasons to believe that businesses will take precautions themselves to limit the spread of the virus internally
It's not even on their radar. Not too long ago, a major university hospital in the Southern US held a town hall on the coming plague. It was an embarrassment. Several times, members of the audience asked about sick leave, in case they are under quarantine or have to care for dependents. Crickets from the leadership.
What is going to happen is that hourly support staff will drag themselves to work sick - that actually happened at an Atlanta school, a substitute teacher collapsed at work with Coronavirus and had to be taken away in an ambulance - and will spread disease to those lucky enough to enjoy better benefits.
Where is political discussion about this threat to public health?
Sore throat is not a known common symptom to COVID-19. The standard list being propagated by public health organizations[1] is: fever (nothing about 101F specifically that I'm aware of), cough, and breathing trouble (e.g. shortness of breath, pneumonia, chest tightness). Upper respiratory symptoms like sore throat are significantly less common with COVID-19 than they are with most viral infections, though obviously the instance isn't going to be zero.
Obviously to some extent this is just pedantry, but at times like this it's really important that we get these things right consistently. If all you have is a sore throat you are very unlikely to have COVID-19 given what we know right now.
The WHO report has sort throat listed in about 13% of cases, so yes not very common.
As of 20 February 2020 and based on 55924 laboratory confirmed cases, typical signs and symptoms include:fever (87.9%), dry cough (67.7%), fatigue (38.1%), sputum production (33.4%), shortness of breath (18.6%), sore throat (13.9%), headache (13.6%), myalgiaor arthralgia (14.8%), chills(11.4%), nausea or vomiting (5.0%), nasal congestion (4.8%), diarrhea (3.7%), and hemoptysis (0.9%), and conjunctival congestion (0.8%)
FYI I work for UHG. They're currently spending tens of millions on infrastructure so that their entire workforce can be remote if this gets any worse. If people self-quarantine, they won't lose sick or vacation days and can work remotely.
Several states are proposing bills to protect people who are in hourly or contract roles where if they do self-quarantine, their jobs are covered and they will still be paid.
I feel like companies and the states are able to do more for their people than the government can. I've never been a huge fan of UHG, but they're putting their money where their mouth is this time and protecting their employees and working to contain the spread of the virus within the company.
That's great to hear! At times like these, it makes sense that we society protect the weak from dying. Its also we as society who carry the burden of a less prosperous economy (on the short term).
Today I read in the news that 4% of all employees of hospitals in North Brabant, The Netherlands have COVID-19.
I’m a little skeptical of that sick leave data source, since it claims that Australia offers 6 months or more “paid leave for personal health needs through employers and the social security system,” while Australian unions are campaigning for government support for 3.3 million casual workers with no sick leave: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/unions-call-for-quarantined-casu...
Keyword is casual workers which I suppose is the same as interim and flex workers. These have different rights [1] than people who have a contract. Same with self-employed.
[1] This has its pros and cons but that is beyond the scope of the point.
That's right. It's not beyond the point because in both countries, these millions of casual retail and hospitality workers are the source of the risk discussed in the article (they won't self-quarantine because it would cost them their income). It would be wrong to look at the chart you linked, which shows Australia and Western Europe as green and the USA as orange, and conclude that the USA is unique among developed economies in having a casualised workforce and "zero universal guaranteed paid sick leave."
What I meant with "beyond the scope of the point" is that the discussion of the pros and cons of such system (of casual workers / interim) i a tangent I'm not going on about.
In this context it'd be proper to include an amount/percentage of people who have such a job versus those who have a normal job (with permanent contract). I'm also interested in differentiation between different states, but then again there might also be differences in say Germany's provinces.
On another note, the USA is not unique among developed economies in this context; South Korea is also a developed economy.
A day late and a dollar short, breaking news in the last half-hour or so suggests a one-mile containment zone is being setup in New York (New Rochelle), National Guard troops have been sent.
Damn it. I intellectually knew it was only a matter of time before it hits hard in the US, but it's different seeing it happen. Next, it will be my city...
Maybe I'm naive or overly optimistic, but I suspect that COVID-19 presents a big enough scare to motivate legislators and voters to fix these problems in the near future.
I've interacted with 4-5 potential voters (people) in the US in the last 2 days, talking about this topic. 100% of them think the virus is a hoax, since the president and media said so, and that it's meant to "distract" the population.
These are just random people in 7-eleven or whatever. At least for now, the 'scare' that people talk about is how controlling the media is and how "this whole virus-thing" is a hoax.
It seems many legislators and those in the executive branch share this view, are calling it a hoax and suggesting that the virus is a political creation meant to hurt the stock markets and prevent the president from being re-elected.
When that many people think it's a hoax, that's a symptom you're observing of people crying wolf too often.
We have a mainstream media credibility crisis because clickbait journalism presents far too many issues as needlessly apocalyptic and journalists are too wrapped up in advocacy instead of just presenting unfiltered facts.
In a zero-based budgetting system, maybe. But given that any opponents will just present such a change as a huge additional expense and very much big government, do you really expect it to get much support?
Some incarnation of "paid sick leave" is likely to emerge [1], though I'm a little pessimistic -- probably would have a sunset clause.
POTUS tiptoed around this yesterday: "We're also going to be talking about hourly wage earners getting help so that they can be in a position where they're not going to ever miss a paycheck." IIUC "Paid sick leave" maybe via tax credit or some other subsidy.
When the first of the 535 members of Congress succumb to the virus, I think it will be pretty motivational for the survivors to enact policy change. The median age of serving Senators is ~66, so if a non-trivial proportion are infected I think we can expect a lot of deaths.
Only if the right politicians are directly affected. The infected individual at CPAC could end up being the unsung hero of pandemic preparedness in the United States.
In the United States, we have these entities called "states" that are often larger than other nations. According to our constitutional system, these "states" are supposed to, and frequently do, legislate on such matters.
We are? Who is “we”? I don’t care for specific laws/legislators/etc but I can’t possibly imagine feeling shame for the emergent properties of such a complex system, especially at the federal level.
Do you hold the Italian people accountable for the actions of their government, or even the Eurozone? Do you think they should walk around in a cloud of self shame?
At the risk of being confrontational, I have to question whether you have ever had a low-paying job in the USA or if you have even taken the time to look at the typical "benefits" and work requirements attached to such jobs. The absolute and unquestionable reality for millions of workers in the USA (food industry, customer service, transportation, and many others) is that they have zero paid sick leave and are also subject to work requirements that allow for their termination with little to no warning for any form of work absence. It follows logically that there is a great deal of people who work while sick and are afraid of missing work for any reason - they have minimal rights, live paycheck to paycheck, can barely afford healthcare, and have almost zero job security.
This is the environment that rabidly pro-business regulation and the erosion of worker protections has created; assertions that the hideously benighted situation of low-paid workers in the USA will magically "self-resolve" without strong legislation go against the entire history of the labor rights movement and basic common sense.
>The absolute and unquestionable reality for millions of workers in the USA (food industry, customer service, transportation, and many others) is that they have zero paid sick leave and are also subject to work requirements
I don't doubt that - but I'm asking for numbers because I also know that some proportion of supervisors even in shitty jobs are understanding enough to offer sick days. And just as in this current system some people are understanding enough to give people time off, under legislation there will also be some proportion of people who ostensibly are doing nothing illegal but indirectly pressure employees not to take time off - the same way people often accumulate vacation time from the same pressures!
That's why I'm legitimately asking for numbers. Because neither case is going to be black or white. Laws are hard do undo and frequently have unintended consequences. Some things are better solved through social reform, if they are necessary at all.
It's like the oft quoted idea that millions of Americans are struggling working multiple jobs to make ends meet and this requires some form of price floor - but if you look at official BLS reports, less than a couple percent (can't remember exactly) are actually in this state. For decisions which affect millions of people, numbers are everything.
The idea that the number of employers who might pressure their employees into not using legally-enshrined sick leave could be comparable to the number of employers who, through the goodness of their hearts, currently offer sick leave to their low-wage employees in the absence of a requirement to do so doesn't hold water. Furthermore, the (quite real) threat that employers will attempt to violate the spirit of a worker protection law should not be justification for society to not implement such laws. History clearly shows us that the goal of improving the lives of American citizens cannot rely upon charitable behavior from corporations.
I agree that neither case may be black or white; however, one is dark, dark gray and the other is eggshell.
Research how many states have pushed hard to break up unions of nearly every type. Wisconsin's governor made the news repeatedly pulling through "right to work" laws (I don't know details but I was shocked at how little pushback I heard about at all).
Here in IL and IA we've been "right to work" for a good while. Most purposefully misleading euphemism ever.
I'd vote for anyone who had a reasonable shot at forcing those laws to be rescinded and basic worker termination protection restored.
> Wisconsin's governor made the news repeatedly pulling through "right to work" laws (I don't know details but I was shocked at how little pushback I heard about at all).
Wisconsinite here: We really love to screw ourselves over. It's our state pastime. Scott Walker went to blue collar neighborhoods and said "I'm going to take away your right to organized negotiation!" and we said "Yes, I LOVE that!" We put his signs in our yards. Then as a joke we voted to remove, and then changed our minds.
When our some of our legislatures refused to go to work because some silly people stood outside the capital with signs, we decided to unelect the ones that stayed in the capital throughout the protests, and reward the ones that left the state entirely. We just love it :)
There's another side to that argument ("the right to make it damn hard to get hired") but maybe this thread isn't the place for meta social/political discussions.
The immediate problem needs the best fix possible and I do have to say the response from the federal government so far has been underwhelming at best.
I think asking vague questions and mouthing hazy principles is a very bad response to a specific, acute situation. If you want to argue against sick leave, fine, take a swing at it. But please do it with specifics and enough data that you have an argument worth taking seriously.
There are places where people are pressured to work while sick? Not because they can’t afford to be home, but due to pressure from peers and/or management?
Where is that? And why? A five year old would realize that sick people hurt productivity by infecting others?
How about a startup, for starters? Where people spend years burning themselves out?
How about when you have a big project coming up for a client and your team is depending on your contributions?
I'm not advocating for this sort of pressure, but I'm saying that even a law requiring paid sick leave is not going to guarantee that people go home when they're sick. Even in low paying jobs, managers still have to cover shifts. There's always pressure to work. Laws aren't magic.
Both of those are examples where it’s typically possible to work from home while ill. That I realize can be a pressure everywhere. There’s a difference between being pressured to work and being pressured to come to work.
It’s the second that is counterproductive.
If it’s the deadline day and you can afford three people to be off next week so long as the one sick person comes in this week, then it’s a conscious tradeoff at least. But in general it’s short sighted and counterproductive, not to mention rude to coworkers.
The pandemic hasn't even officially started yet; you're making a lot of assumptions about how the situation will unfold that are nowhere near justified. Pieces of paper saying that everything should be alright are one of many things that do not have an impact on the virus. The US has officially done better than most countries with a sick leave policy, although the real state of affairs we won't know for a while and is likely to be horrible.
From afar, the biggest problem looks like the CDCs iron clad grip on test kit certification slowing the response by a month. This compounds a general view of mine that the American healthcare system is crippled by existing regulation that links insurance to employment. Linking emergency response funding to employment is another terrible idea that will hardly assist the situation.
What everyone needed was a disaster preparedness plan. Forcing companies to pay money that they are probably not going to have in a pandemic is a great way to obscure from people how much planning they need to do. Companies don't have magically deep pockets.
> The US has officially done better than most countries with a sick leave policy
This isn't true though. We're simply behind them on the infection timeline, thanks solely to geographical proximity and luck. We're several weeks behind Italy, Korea, Japan, and Iran in terms of how long the virus has been spreading here, and months behind China. You can't compare us now to them now.
We're behind them on the timeline because the president restricted travel from the epicenter back at the end of January [1], and the US is the best prepared country in the world for an epidemic [2]. Italy got its 3rd coronavirus case on Feb. 6 [3], and now its totals are at 10k.
Take a look at the cases/country chart on [4] and sort by cases/population. The US is many orders of magnitude better than European countries. It's absolutely worth comparing for specifically the reasons mentioning in OP's post, that being ahead of this makes all the difference in the world.
And then we proceeded to waste all of that lead time and did nothing with it. We didn't even have a working test until recently.
Meanwhile, we're gonna be at 1,000 confirmed cases in the US in another day or so and the exponential increase is continuing. We're not doing better than European countries by any stretch; what's happening there is going to be happening here in a month's time.
And being "best prepared for an epidemic" may have been true back in 2016, but it's certainly not true under Trump. He fired the highly successful crack epidemiologist team that was initially assembled to fight ebola, and the administration's response to the crisis so far has been largely incoherent, focusing more on the stock market than actually preventing the spread of the disease, and with officials continually contradicting each other and downplaying the serious of the pandemic. Pence, the man in charge of the response, is notable for having presided over an HIV epidemic in his home state. We simply don't have the right people at all in charge to manage this, and that matters greatly. And we still have way too many people not making a livable wage, who aren't guaranteed paid sick days and can't afford to not work.
I'm not a Trump fan, but he made the right choice by shutting down China travel. However, preparedness -- what does that mean? Does that mean we can usually successfully contain illnesses before they break out? That's great, but it's not going to help us anymore. It's already here.
What we need are hospital beds and ventilators. Are we doing ANYTHING to prepare those? Anything at all? Or will we wake up when people are literally dying in the streets, like as is certainly happening in other places in the world?
The US is one plane flight from China and Italy is one plane flight from China. And their testing has reportedly been weak compared to many countries; they might be in a more advanced state of trouble than it appears.
But the major point here I am happy to concede; it is far to early to start comparing how the US is doing with how everyone else is doing.
The flights don't matter anymore. It's already here, and it's clear we won't start doing anything about it until the hospitals start overflowing, so whether that point is in a month or three doesn't seem that much different to me.
I hate to sound so bleak, but I believe it is mostly accurate.
The content is awesome and the site is starting to struggle with the demand. Here's a cache/mirror/archive (ctrl-f) in case it goes down completely: https://archive.is/Du1G2
speaking as someone who served in the army national guard, this pandemic isnt nearly as devastating as a natural disaster. So long as there is still clean water, electricity, and communications systems online, you're okay.
A few tips on things that can be stocked (or should be checked) for general disaster preparedness:
0. bottles of clean water. Old milk jugs of tap h20 will do.
1. dry goods like beans and rice which are compatible with boil-water advisories. peanut butter is also good.
2. a fever reducer of some sort. even a few Acetaminophen or aspirin.
3. Cheap bar soap. dollar store or discount brand. The article is correct in that every emergency needs good hygiene. bar soap can be split up among family members.
if you're handy with technology, you should consider an amateur radio license. http://www.arrl.org/
amateur operators are absolutely appreciated by military and red cross workers as the fastest way to get in touch with affected communities.
Soaking is not enough to remove phytohaemagglutinin. Phytohaemagglutinin is destroyed by sufficient cooking, which according to the FDA's food safety book[0] means boiling for 30 minutes. Slow cookers do not get hot enough. And it's not just kidney beans; many other beans also contain phytohaemagglutinin, sometimes at dangerous levels.
It's not a culinary requirement, it just means you don't have to boil them for absolutely ever. A pressure cooker is quite effective if one happens to have one.
My experience with most beans-qua-beans is that a pre-soak or pressure is needed or they'll still be somewhat chalky even after 90+ minutes at a boil. Lentils and peas don't have this limitation.
For dried beans, I recommend Bittman's quick-soak approach. Basically you throw the beans in a lot of water, get them to boiling, and then let them sit for a couple hours. It's equivalent to soaking them overnight. Then cook as normal. Details here: https://www.markbittman.com/recipes-1/cooked-beans-the-quick...
They're talking about "for general disaster preparedness" in this comment. The OP specifically mentions not worrying about water in the case of COVID specifically.
My guess is GP is suggesting water for disasters, such as earthquakes, floods, or other situations where water supplies will often be compromised. I say that because GP differentiated between pandemics, and natural disasters, and specifically mentioned his/her experience working disasters in the national guard. I believe the distinction being drawn here is that, as far as we know, infrastructure hasn't been compromised by COVID-19
I'm sorry but what you are saying makes no sense. You can't compare a (localized?) natural disaster to a potential worldwide pandemic. We most likely haven't even seen the beginning of it given the exponential rise of cases in many countries around the world.
>3. Cheap bar soap. dollar store or discount brand. The article is correct in that every emergency needs good hygiene. bar soap can be split up among family members.
Given our propensity towards liquid versions (at least in my circles and from what I can see culturally) I wonder if solid soap will be easier to acquire over liquid soap and hand sanitizer...
This is a great resource, but I hope that the author sees this comment.
If you want to maximize credibility, remove the line about supporting artists, and anything that can be perceived as political like the line about healthcare.
Artists are a small percentage of people impacted, restaurant workers, nail salons, retail, hotels, airline employees, contractors, massage professionals etc. The list is almost limitless. If you are in another group, you are going to read that line, and think, what about me?
Healthcare is a politically charged issue, right or wrong, listing that here discredits the message for half the readers.
The overall message is important, and I encourage the author to make a few tweaks to get it in front of more people and save lives.
Totally agree. Wife has a small business. She's lost $20k in contracts in 2ks. Gonna affect her 45 employees. She gets no sympathy, yet she has to pay the business expenses regardless, taxes, unemployment... Politics will turn people away.
The political discussion should happen separately from a brilliant piece of writing that has the ability to encourage many people to act in a way that will save lives.
Muddying that message with political and partisan discussion is not helpful. Your comments are not constructive to this discussion and the messaging around healthcare and artists is not constructive to the messaging in the document.
The fact that you cannot see that only highlights my point.
> Healthcare is a politically charged issue, right or wrong, listing that here discredits the message for half the readers.
and regardless of what one thinks about the issue, there is no way the US is passing sweeping legislation overhauling the whole system, and getting it implemented, in time to do any good at all in the current situation.
You don't need sweeping reform to bolster confidence in the healthcare system, a targeted emergency appropriation can go a long way.
Congress saying they are going to pass a bill to pay for testing and then doing it would not be difficult, and it would reduce qualms about getting tests.
Who is going to pay the bill for the massive run on hospitals that is going to take place in early May, if Italy is any guide? Unless the major health insurers have adequate reinsurance in place, they are going to go belly-up. Same with hospital providers, they are going to have to provide surge capacity, yet in the last 30 years they have been run by economists who have been trained in the just-in-time mindset.
There will have to be a bailout, and the aftermath should mean nationalization. Public health has been neglected for far too long.
I agree. When I read something like this, I have a hard time trusting that the rest of an article isn't aimed at pushing a political agenda rather than spreading information directly related to containment. I'd rather not have to be suspicious and just focus on consuming & evaluating the scientific information.
Agreed, I saw that political/moralizing comments and stopped reading. Most of this is common sense, but when I see the political talk I'm much more suspicious of the actual message.
Rather than criticize public health messaging for being at odds with popular political positions, shouldn't we put the onus on popular politicians and parties to embrace whatever health policy is best suited to public health needs?
Obviously, the best health policies are debatable. Saying “our system isn’t prepared for this, therefore we need single-payer!” is moronic and insulting to the reader’s intelligence.
I think he is referencing this line in particular.
"Live performers are going to be hard hit economically. Consider supporting their work on Patreon, directly via PayPal, or attend only the smaller shows. Promote them on social media. Buy their work directly."
I do not really agree with removing this line, as it is good advice. I wouldn't be against expanding the content to include other professions, although the single-payer advocacy kind of does that for some of them.
Live performers are going to be hard hit economically. Consider supporting their work on Patreon, directly via PayPal, or attend only the smaller shows. Promote them on social media. Buy their work directly.
I think the author would get more credibility if they didn't just link to several other twitter posts - and actually linked to proper data from the WHO etc.
No. The support artists is part of the theme of support eachother that is omnipresent in the writing.
Apart from this in the age of streaming the only spurce of income for eg bands are live gigs, so the advice is good, and not just now; do support your favourite bands, painters, musicians, etc., and do it directly. If the gig is out, buy merch.
Partisanship I'd argue is bad. Politics, however, is not.
The idea that we should ignore the state of our healthcare system because we find politics icky is counter-productive to building an effective system for dealing with public health systems. We can't avoid facts because they're uncomfortable and the public needs to be engaged with political leadership for problems to be solved. That's politics.
You don't "save lives" by saying discussion of the healthcare system is off-limits. The two things are quite related to one another!
You're missing the point, the problem that is if you're trying to offer credible expert opinion on how to deal with a crisis, you undermine those opinions by introducing a highly charged political wedge issue that offers no solutions to the problem at hand.
Sure, you can argue that single-payer healthcare would have been good to solve this crisis and others would certainly argue that it would make things worse, but the debate is totally fruitless because implementing such a system will take years--well after coronavirus is either endemic or wiped out. Thus, even bringing it up makes me question whether you, as an expert, are capable of divorcing your personal bias from your scientific objectivity. I immediately think, "is this person speaking from their objective expertise, or do they look for the data that satisfies their political arguments, and ignoring the rest?"
Scientists should tell people the facts as objectively as possible because that is the purpose of the field and discipline. Leave activism to others, who will use the facts to come to whatever conclusions they can.
How far should scientists take this principle? If a political party decided to take the view that this whole thing was no big deal and that big events in key geographies shouldn't be cancelled, should public health experts stay out of it because it could make people ignore their other recommendations? Experts should offer their views and the burden is on us to be open-minded, regardless of our ideologies.
There's a separate point you make about what things can and cannot be done in this moment. But that's not the original point made. Most of the "politics" recommendations could in fact be done during this time. Some are even being discussed, short-term.
> by introducing a highly charged political wedge issue that offers no solutions to the problem at hand
which seems to be their core issue.
Some proposed solutions may become political as you describe, but that doesn't change their utility as proposed solutions to the problem. Whereas it seems like the entire section "Relative to Other Countries, US Labor and Healthcare Policies are a Perfect Storm for Pandemics" could have been omitted entirely without losing any value related to slowing the spread of COVID-19.
What's your argument that none of the items listed in that section would slow the spread of COVID-19? Some of them are being considered on a short-term basis by political officials right now on the very basis that it could slow that spread.
If one of our two political parties was calling for everybody to lick doorknobs in areas where there have been coronavirus outbreaks, does arguing against that suddenly become partisan?
How about experts talk about what's in their experience and then it's the job of open-minded citizens to evaluate it, hopefully with good political leadership from elected officials? Now, it's fair to weigh different public health experts advice, and it's fair to also weigh what experts on economics have to say, so that we can evaluate pros and cons.
But this idea that experts shouldn't talk about healthcare systems that need to be changed in order to better meet the moment because talking about it is "politics"... Sorry, but I don't think it makes sense. You don't solve problems by running away from them. Experts can do more than say that we should wash our hands. In fact, we need them to!
All of the experts who are qualified to speak on this topic and everyone else writing about it should probably be focusing solely on the ongoing pandemic because there is literally nothing we can realistically do about the partisan stuff until that is resolved. Even if we all came together in a Kumbaya moment right now, between legilastive procedure, court challenges, bureaucratic inertia, and the chaos caused by said ongoing pandemic nothing productive would happen anyway. We won't bring pricing transparency and trust busting to healthcare or medicare for all or whatever anyone's ideology calls for until the dust has settled. Until that happens, it's just going to keep pushing us apart while the best opportunity since the 2000s to work past the partisan divide is staring us right in the face.
Paid sick leave (including caring for family members) is one item that can absolutely be dealt with in the moment during this ongoing pandemic, and MUST be dealt with to have an effective response. Same for how we deal with a lack of hospital beds. Same for the problem of financial support for those trying to self-quarantine. Same for issues related to how uninsured folks can get care. All of these things are politics.
There's legislation being discussed as we speak that may deal with many of these things, even if only on a temporary basis. It's simply false that the only things we can do, we must do as individuals and cannot do through government and with political leadership.
If you're making a narrower point about Medicare for All, I'd put that in a different category than most of these political recommendations simply because it would take years to implement. But that's different from arguing that we should ignore the merits of sound public health recommendations on the basis that some people have an ideological aversion to hearing it.
> Paid sick leave (including caring for family members) is one item that can absolutely be dealt with in the moment during this ongoing pandemic, and MUST be dealt with to have an effective response. Same for how we deal with a lack of hospital beds. Same for the problem of financial support for those trying to self-quarantine. Same for issues related to how uninsured folks can get care. All of these things are politics.
> There's legislation being discussed as we speak that may deal with many of these things, even if only on a temporary basis. It's simply false that the only things we can do, we must do as individuals and cannot do through government and with political leadership.
I'm arguing that any such attempt is doomed to failure if it so much as even stirs the beast of partisanship because of how far gone our civic discourse is. I believe most or all of the things you listed can be done quickly by the executive branches of local, state, and federal governments within the bounds of existing legislation. At this point, anything but the most bipartisan bills are impossible to do on a short time frame. The place to be is lobbying governors, political appointees that lead state and federal agencies, and civil servants on the ground. They have unilateral power to actually do something about the situation because emergency powers are very broad (Lincoln used his to suspend habeas corpus!) and justices will be even more hesitant to reign in executive power during a pandemic than whatever immigration state of emergency enabled the travel bans. That way, even judicial branch challenges will slow down partisan interference instead of obstructing the intended goal.
I hope I'm wrong and our legislature does pull it together under threat of an emergency. After all, if JFK getting shut down was enough to end the government shutdown, maybe a pandemic cratering the global economy is more than enough to bring us together, at least for a little bit. However if the goal is to get something done instead of arguing over what to do, I'd look to the executive branch, not legislative. The former is meant to do, the latter is meant to argue.
Edit: I wasn't trying to make a point with medicare for all, just trying to pick out some examples from different sides of the isle (single payer on the left, free market reforms on the right). I'll admit I don't know enough about either group of ideologies to predict which relevant bills would be bipartisan enough to pass quickly but based on how antagonistic partisans have become, I don't think it'd be much since we don't have much time for the normal pork barreling process to work.
I don't think public health experts should be taking partisan views of the public into consideration, or need to be experts on what can and cannot pass legislatively, personally. They should be objectively speaking from experience as health professionals and/or scientists.
This author has "a masters degree in public health from the University of London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as well as a background in infectious diseases and vaccine development." They are not literally at somebody's deathbed trying to prevent them from dying at this moment.
So really, here's the comparison: 647,000 Americans die from heart disease each year. Do I think doctors should be afraid to talk about obesity because it might turn people off listening to their other recommendations?
Honestly there are people who just do not care. Article has interesting content. But political stuff is just like ads, you ignore it, or go away if it becomes too annoying.
I am not even from US, we have universal healthcare, but it is even more broken than yours.
Except it's not. Improving health care in the US is actually very centrist and polls show majority supported among independents, democrats, and republicans. Albeit slight more on the left than the right. Pretending it's partisan is just a way to quell progress on something that most people are in favor of.
Nobody cares what you were thinking about. This whole thread is based on the author's decision to insert a push for single-payer healthcare into an article about the outbreak. And the point is that a general agreement that healthcare should be improved doesn't justify pushing a particular, partisan solution in this context. That applies whether you would push for single-payer, medicare for all, or a true free market.
I wholeheartedly agree...”Never has there been a clearer case for single-payer health care as a public good. The voting public in the US need to care as much about “keeping their doctor” as they do about keeping their doctor alive.”
Regardless of your political point of view, when you see political statements like this, it should raise serious doubts about the veracity of everything else in the article, regardless of how factual it may be. Even if every fact in it is true, the clearly political motives of the author indicate that they likely cherry picked facts to support their viewpoint. One only need tune into CNN or Fox News to see how political propaganda masquerading as “news” is toxic for society and how “facts” can be warped to support any point of view.
It's being flagged by users, and also downweighted by mods. HN has had a ton of these threads already, and there are other covid-19-related posts on the front page.
This submission is of a different resource. This resource goes into more detail about lots of things. However, the "Flatten the Curve" idea had already been submitted in the referenced submission above. It was less complete, but had already sparked a large discussion.
So should the resulting discussion be started all over again here on this, more complete submission? Or should the discussion remain in one primary location to avoid repetition and to gather the insights, thoughts, rebuttals etc in one place?
Who knows ... I provided the cross-reference to allow the decision to be made. This submission has now hit the top spot on the front page and is spawning a conversation. So the decision is made, and the cross-reference has been rendered moot.
Further edit ...
I think it unreasonable that the people who responded to me should be downvoted, and I've upvoted them in an attempt to balance that. I think the comments are fair and reasonable, and belong in the discussion.
Except that the discussion is common ... it's all about the concept of flattening the curve to reduce the peak and thereby not exceed the capacity of the health service.
It's the same data, it's the same idea, it's the same argument, but from a different source.
It's also all now all over the place ... I could find 8 or 10 different sites to submit, all with the same message. Is it useful then to have 8 or 10 discussion on HN all hacking over the same ground, all making the same points, all having the same "insights" and disagreements?
I think not, and that's why I linked this submission to the existing discussion.
I don't think you've looked at the linked page in this case. It's not what you think it is, and the difference in the two discussions also reflects that.
Why put the goal at flattening, instead of just killing it completely? If you observably flatten the curve, you're already almost all of the way to get R_0 to below 1. Why not just go all the way? The Chinese seem to have managed it, why aim at anything less?
>Why put the goal at flattening, instead of just killing it completely?
Because the American government does not have the state capacity to carry out necessary measures and the American population doesn't have the discipline to listen.
Same is probably true for a bunch of other countries and failed states, I don't even want to know how many people in iran are actually infected at this point.
When/if news crews start reporting that patients over 65 are not assessed by a doctor because there isn't enough doctors. And we see videos of crowded hospitals where people die because of insufficient care.
Sure, but anything less won't make much of a dent. That's my point: to observably flatten the curve, you need to go almost all the way there of killing it altogether. The "flat curve" region of R_0 is just very, very small.
> That's my point: to observably flatten the curve, you need to go almost all the way there of killing it altogether.
no, you don't. killing it completely would (hand-waving) require taking R0 < 1, and holding it there indefinitely.
any reduction in R0 at all will flatten the curve, at least a bit. and small changes in the rate of growth can have a huge impact when you're dealing with (even temporarily) exponential growth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kas0tIxDvrg
Because almost everyone I talk to in person doesn't even seem to understand that this is happening. They're certainly not going to be receptive to a total lockdown until they start hearing second degree contacts are dying.
Framing it like this anticipates the silly but common fatalist argument "that everyone will be infected" or "there is little an individual can do". The more nuanced point is that it won't come to a dead stop. The curve graph also highlights the importance of individual action in taking strain of the healthcare system.
The only option is to delay the spread and inject people with a deactivated carona vaccine as soon as possible, which should stop half the population from getting it, and reduced lethality for those who do get it.
Chinese haven't killed it at all. As soon as they lift the quarantine it'll get reimported from elsewhere in the world. Eradicating a disease requires worldwide cooperation, which hasn't been in evidence at all this outbreak. Just look at how stubborn measles and polio have been, despite both having inexpensive vaccines and only human hosts.
We would love to kill it, but that's not really an option right now. To kill it we either need a vaccine or to quarantine every single person 24/7 because we don't know who has it. We don't have a vaccine yet and the other option would completely kill all economic activity. More people would die from lack of access to food, water, and emergency services.
Because, between the lines, the level of top down, military like action and trampling of civil rights that is possible in China is likely not possible here without sparking a civil war - making the whole situation worse.
Well I'm just talking a few Waco Texas, nothing too apocalyptic on the insurrectionary front. If the government learned how to stimulate the economy for real, and starting doing some all the deferred infrastructure work, I'm sure it could lift us out of the economic woes the quarantine created. It would would just take some time to figure it out, the US governments are all brawn no brains right now, but things ran decently well in WWII so we'd get there after a while.
I'm not saying this is good, I'm saying if you don't like a huge state intervention, don't pat yourself on the back saying it would go miserably enough to make the government change its mind.
"The constitution isn't a suicide pact" is the exact wording used by Lincoln to defend suspending Habeas Corpus during the Civil War. The same exact line was used to defend Kormatsu vs United States (Japanese Internment, which is still fully legal to execute in 2020 per Trump v Hawaii)
If shit gets bad, the courts will rubber stamp literally anything done in the name of national security. I fully expect constitutional rights to be thrown out the window temporarily.
I think you underestimate the number of people with weapons, a serious anti-government attitude, and some strong beliefs that most people would consider at best wacky. I don't think a civil war is likely. But when we look at past incidents like Waco, Ruby Ridge, Oklahoma City, Jade Helm [1], and Malheur, it's not absurd.
A few years back I stopped at a blueberry farm just off the highway in Oregon. In under 10 minutes of conversation, a very nice grandmother was explaining how the Obama administration had made a deal so the UN could come in black helicopters and take all their guns, but that they were ready for it.
I got my blueberries and got out. But you can bet that there are a whole lot of people with guns and Millenarianist notions that are sure that this time it's really the end times, and that would not take kindly to government-enforced quarantines.
In under 10 minutes of conversation, a very nice grandmother was explaining how the Obama administration had made a deal so the UN could come in black helicopters and take all their guns, but that they were ready for it.
Maybe she read about the Ruby Ridge incident, to which you only allude in the same breath as Oklahoma bombing, and knew that it was a story of a government coming to a guy minding his own business, and killing his wife, his son and his dog, for basically no reason at all.
I hope that at least you recognize how utterly different it is from Oklahoma bombing, which was a terrorist act, pure and simple. Note, for example, that McVeigh got death penalty, and Nichols got life in prison, while Weaver was acquitted from all charges other than failure to appear for a warrant that he was not served properly, and got over 3 million dollars of compensation from the government.
I don't think that's all that unlikely these days. I wouldn't quite give you even odds on it, but I'd take that bet for 10:1 odds, assuming I could get paid in some currency (like Bitcoin or gold) that would still have value after the U.S. breaks up.
How close are we to a civil war? People have stated that someone infected with Covid19 should deliberately try to infect Republicans. They later said that they were joking. Were they? Will someone take them seriously and actually try? I say this to say that, at least in some peoples' minds, we are very close to a civil war.
In the US, if the military tried to quarrantine, say, Seattle, by force, what are the odds that Antifa or somebody would look at it as the Trump-run right-wing military trying to occupy Seattle against the will of the people? Would that trigger a full-out civil war? Hopefully not, but...
Chinese are certainly lying about numbers, and even if they aren't, they can't possibly return to work (which they're also lying about) and simultaneously be containing this bug.
At best, even if they're telling the truth about numbers, the moment that they stop lying about economic activity and actually bring workers back to work, than their case numbers will go back up again.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I believe that either 1. The Chinese will go to great lengths to show evidence that "things are the way we say they are" in much the same way that North Korea does with American tourists.
The less likely scenario in my mind 2. is that the claims of the WHO being compromised by China are true. This article doesn't do much for me to dispel those concerns given that it's a prominent WHO doctor who penned your linked article.
Maybe I'm totally wrong and China is telling the truth, but that sort of intuition when applied to basically any other part of economic activity with the Chinese is just blatantly wrong (just ask people who work with Chinese suppliers about how crappy their "save face" system is re: trying to get a straight answer about any problems)
Part of the problem is that too many people look at the current state of their communities and conclude everything is all right.
What they're failing to consider is that Wuhan, Italy, New York, Seattle, and San Jose are not anomalies. If your community has no reported infections, it's rapidly becoming the anomaly.
Consider those places you keep hearing about as a glimpse into the future - your future. Then take steps to do what you can as an individual to prevent that from happening.
worldometers has more complete info but here is an interesting chart I've also been tracking that compares the exponential growth of several countries after they reached 100 cases
https://studylib.net/coronavirus-growth
Despite the differences in start times, the similarities in the curves are remarkable - although so are the deviations. I've basically been watching the US follow the same path as a few European countries, just on a lag of a few days.
I'm curious -- are there things that Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong doing that we should all copy? Their trajectory looks pretty different from that of other countries.
Could you do the same with time after 500 (or 1000) cases. There is a whole bunch of parallel curves that seem to be displaced mostly because of differences in early testing but otherwise show the same growth rate.
Awesome idea. But I'm curious about your data source since I don't see the biggest spike when China revised their numbers. How did you smooth that out?
Interesting that the advice here - masks not helpful - is almost totally and directly contradicted by the advice in all infectious disease transmission training, most other countries that have flattened the curve by dramatically increasing supply and distribution with mandated mask wearing, making them available at the post office etc.
The odd image of folks wearing masks saying masks don't help is not lost on most americans.
Here's a different doctors advice on masks:
The only way for the virus to infect you is through your nose or mouth via your hands or an infected cough or sneeze onto or into your nose or mouth. Use disposable surgical masks and use them to prevent you from touching your nose and/or mouth (We touch our nose/mouth 90X/day without knowing it!). This is the only way this virus can infect you - it is lung-specific. The mask is just to prevent hand to mouth contact, it will not avoid the sneeze part of things.
Masks are a low cost, non-hospital, low side effect, low economic impact intervention. Even if only minimally effective there are very few downsides to mask usage for an individual.
I've come to think that the re-assurance that this virus is "fully contained" - see Kudlow, that masks don't help (see this and others) will come back as some pretty bad advice later on. We'll see I guess.
Slightly off-topic, but does anyone know about the efficacy of coughing/sneezing into one's shirt (by pulling the collar above the mouth or nose) when there are no better alternatives?
I do that, on the theory that it will trap much of the contaminated droplets leaving my body, preventing the from reaching the air and surfaces nearby.
They are worried about the image of Americans wearing masks on TV. When that congressman in Trump’s plane found out he had been exposed mid-flight, they didn’t put a mask on him (at least not when he exited the plane). So even in a national security critical situation (president is in 70s), image is way more important.
Yes - I've heard that. The whole don't want to worry people by wearing masks. If you aren't wearing a mask a sneeze near me I'm more worried not less.
I don't know where the don't wear masks they aren't helpful push came from. I think perhaps a misguided attempt to deal with a resource constraint (ie, lie to them about mask benefit so they won't wear them and worry others and won't use them?)
It's totally unique to the US however. Asia is going the other way.
The closest thing the article says is that you should not hoard masks, that their usefulness is against airborne particles is limited to 30 min and that masks can make some people touch their face more.
> that their usefulness is against airborne particles is limited to 30 min and that masks can make some people touch their face more.
Where is the evidence?
"Experience in these settings indicates that respirators can function within their design specifications for 8 hours of continuous or intermittent use. Some research studies (14, 15) have recruited healthcare workers as test subjects and many of those subjects have successfully worn an N95 respirator at work for several hours before they needed to remove them. Thus, the maximum length of continuous use in non-dusty healthcare workplaces is typically dictated by hygienic concerns (e.g., the respirator was discarded because it became contaminated) or practical considerations (e.g., need to use the restroom, meal breaks, etc.), rather than a pre-determined number of hours."
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/hcwcontrols/recommendedguid...
Every reasonable study shows masks being useful. It's why everyone wears them in a medical setting. They are not a guarantee by any means, but you can layer risk reductions.
Remind people not to touch their face. Put a surgical mask to reinforce that over nose and mouth. Other benefits if they happen to be sick themselves. etc.
There was even thought of encouraging mask use to handle seasonal flu - they are very effective, normal issue is low adherence (people don't like wearing them).
> Every reasonable study shows masks being useful. It's why everyone wears them in a medical setting.
What studies? Doctors wear masks to catch droplets from their own mouth and nose. Masks aren't designed to stop viruses, which can enter from the side. They may help if someone sneezes directly in front of you, but that's about it.
If you are going to pump out lies please do it when folks are not facing something like covid. Seriously, wearing a mask has almost no downside if you are in a high risk area / are older, and some proven upsides.
"Masks are NOT the most useful thing you can do to protect yourself: they’re hard to wear properly, especially for long periods of time, and their effectiveness against viral particles stops as the filter gets moist with your breathing. Also for some people, wearing a mask makes it more likely that they will touch their face."
Reality - masks are a valid, additional step. And given all the other crazy, high cost, high impact steps being taken to "flatten the curve" a low cost low impact step like mask wearing should be on the recommendations list.
Even kids (ultra low risk) in shanghai are wearing masks in the playgrounds. And here we have older adults squeezed onto mass transit and are telling them all the reasons why masks may not help.
To flatten the curve all low cost low impact steps should be taken.
In Asia it is common to wear masks for air pollution reasons. It might or might not help with a virus, but you can't cite kids in Shanghai unless you can show there is an increase.
I was basing this off first person accounts from ex-pats in asia - the big message was that masks are now worn both as a courtesy to others and in some cases are required and kids don't like to wear masks - which makes it tricky when they are mandated. I can't find the blog though.
Single-digit percentages of Asians are wearing masks under normal circumstances, some for pollution and mostly because it's expected if you have a respiratory infection.
Masks are now required in public in substantial parts of China. You can be arrested if you leave the house without one.
Good lord, the site is not _about_ pursuing a political agenda. It includes one in the middle, sure (somewhat distastefully imo. Never waste a good crisis, I guess), but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. The content itself is solid.
If the site is not pursuing a political agenda, why put that stuff in there? All it does is interfere because people who disagree with all of those claims may ignore the whole thing.
If it doesn't help, take it out. Otherwise, it's about politics.
> Relative to Other Countries, US Labor and Healthcare Policies are a Perfect Storm for Pandemics
>
> Zero universal guaranteed paid sick leave
> Even among those with paid sick leave, the covered time frame is often on the order of days, not the weeks adequate to account for prolonged illness.
> Zero guaranteed paid family leave to care for sick members
> Zero guaranteed financial or operational support for people who should self-quarantine. People are therefore ignoring quarantine because they need to eat.
> Many people are uninsured. Given where things are right now (cryptic transmission and no available vaccine), the insurance companies have a moral obligation but have no financial incentive to improve testing and ensure access to care.
> In the USA insurance is tied to their employment, so when they get sick they are also vulnerable to bankruptcy. In a pandemic year this is devastating for an economy.
> Never has there been a clearer case for single-payer health care as a public good. The voting public in the US need to care as much about “keeping their doctor” as they do about keeping their doctor alive. Doctors worldwide are getting pummeled on the frontlines of this crisis, the lack of protective equipment is causing them to get infected, and themselves unable to get the care they need. For a personal lens on this, have a look here, but this is by no means unique; the accounts are flooding in.
The only sentence that could be seen as politically motivated is "Never has there been a clearer case for single-payer health care as a public good." With the exception of that one sentence, those are all facts, and it's disturbing to think that saying the fact that insurance is tied to employment is somehow political.
You and the other commenter I believe are not seeing other sides to positions, which is common amongst almost everyone.
Those "facts" (facts, themselves, are subjective because they judged so by man) presented are highly selective in order to lead to a specific conclusion.
For example, it doesn't state that you can't purchase health insurance across state borders - also a fact and also contributes to increased prices.
The reason that insurance is "tied" to employment is because only a company can deduct health insurance on their taxes.
Building a new hospital is nearly impossible due to, among many other regulations, being required to get permission from other regional hospitals before building a new hospital. This both increases prices and reduces the number of available beds.
And to yet further demonstrate my point, we can see that even mentioning the political agenda on the site generates discussion on the politics.
> For example, it doesn't state that you can't purchase health insurance across state borders - also a fact and also contributes to increased prices.
That is true, and there are many other facts it doesn't mention, it is not an exhaustive review of contributing factors...
> The reason that insurance is "tied" to employment is because only a company can deduct health insurance on their taxes.
That is true but irrelevant extra information, the virus doesn't care...
> Building a new hospital is nearly impossible due to, among many other regulations, being required to get permission from other regional hospitals before building a new hospital. This both increases prices and reduces the number of available beds.
That is true, how is it relevant?
All these facts aren't relevant to the discussion the article is introducing, about how the "US Labor and Healthcare Policies are a Perfect Storm for Pandemics"
But none of those reasons matter - the "why" that insurance is tied to employment doesn't matter because it does and affects this situations reality, right now. Apologizing for that "why" doesn't change the situation one iota.
> But none of those reasons matter - the "why" that insurance is tied to employment doesn't matter because it does and affects this situations reality, right now. Apologizing for that "why" doesn't change the situation one iota.
I seem to have not made my positions clear: The site has a political agenda, which is made clear by the quoted section, which includes statements are selected to support the political policy being promoted.
So, the reason the things I stated matter is that we can easily come to different conclusions, and that is likely why they are left off of the site:
Can't sell health insurance across state borders - fix by permitting sales across borders, putting downward pressure on price.
Insurance is tied to employment because of the tax code - fix by either eliminating the deduction or adding the deduction to personal tax code.
Can't build new hospitals because you have to get permission from other regional hospitals - fix by getting rid of the regulation, thus generating increased interest in new hospital development, in turn increasing the number of beds and putting downward pressure on prices.
> Do you reject the statement made by TFA, 'US Labor and Healthcare Policies are a Perfect Storm for Pandemics'?
I have not disagreed with any of the stated facts and I don't disagree with that claim, I'm claiming that the facts have been carefully selected to promote a political agenda.
As an example: "Zero guaranteed financial or operational support for people who should self-quarantine. People are therefore ignoring quarantine because they need to eat. " This exactly lays out how people are behaving. That's not politics.
> As an example: "Zero guaranteed financial or operational support for people who should self-quarantine. People are therefore ignoring quarantine because they need to eat. " This exactly lays out how people are behaving. That's not politics.
If you expect responses, you should spend more time making sure you understand what posters have posted, because it seems you haven't read anything I posted beyond one single post.
Reply to generalpass (here because replies weren't enabled to their comment for some reason)
> For example, it doesn't state that you can't purchase health insurance across state borders - also a fact and also contributes to increased prices.
That is true, and there are many other facts it doesn't mention, it is not an exhaustive review of contributing factors...
> The reason that insurance is "tied" to employment is because only a company can deduct health insurance on their taxes.
That is true but irrelevant extra information, the virus doesn't care...
> Building a new hospital is nearly impossible due to, among many other regulations, being required to get permission from other regional hospitals before building a new hospital. This both increases prices and reduces the number of available beds.
That is true, how is it relevant?
All these facts aren't relevant to the discussion the article is introducing, about how the "US Labor and Healthcare Policies are a Perfect Storm for Pandemics"
Just for information - "reply" takes longer and longer to appear the further down a tree you get. I assume it's to stop a rapid fire heated argument and force some reflection time.
The first section seems to be stating facts, and the second editorializes a conclusion based on those facts. Do you raise an issue with the first paragraph?
As I suggested on another thread (and received some flak for it), it would be really interesting to see some math and/or a simulation to compare these two scenarios. In reality, closer to 30% than 100% of the world population will end up being infected by a disease like this (look at Spanish flu or Swine flu for reference [0]), and the total number of infected is probably different between the two curves.
Consider a hypothetical scenario: authorities encourage young and healthy people to go out and about their daily lives and get sick, and they institute a voluntary quarantine for people who would be considered highly at risk. Would more or fewer "at-risk" people become infected?
These are some other factors to consider:
- Could a short term quarantine for at-risk groups (shorter because the faster general infection rate would result in faster herd immunity) be more effective? Do quarantines and social distancing measures suffer from "quarantine fatigue"?
- What are the comparative mortality rates between people with medical care and those without it? (i.e. those in an overwhelmed system due to the fast spreading scenario)
- Does recovering from the illness result in strong immunity?
- What are the comparative costs of quarantines to society and economy at large?
- At what point is a vaccine or treatment likely to be widely available (if it is soon, then the slower spread is obviously crucial).
I suspect the answer is very nuanced. If I get some time, I will put together a simulation and try my hand at the math, but I am curious if anyone has already considered and compared these factors quantitatively.
This is not concern trolling or virtue signalling. What you're doing is closer to both of those words than what the author did.
Especially if you read the two sentences that the author writes under that section. It's pretty damn tame. (and that's why I'm pretty sure you didn't based on your response)
I did read them and agree that they're tame. I just disagree with the constant narrative that the US is some disgustingly racist country, it's something that comes up more than racism.
I find virtue-signaling tiresome myself, but in this case I don't think the author was virtue-signalling or being an SJW. There are some real concerns around xenophobic responses around the world and I think the author wrote those words sincerely. Plus I don't think she was referring to the U.S. specifically.
When people are fearful, their higher executive functions become impaired, and it is exactly these executive functions that are needed to weigh the facts and to avoid impulse blaming, which in this context manifests in xenophobic behaviors.
All of us need occasional reminders to help us realize that we can rise above our baser survival instincts. We all impulse-blame -- that's just human nature, I do it too. But we can do better than that.
At no point was the author ever claiming that the US is a disgusting or racist country. At best, the author noted a minor uptick in racist acts as a result of corona, which is objectively true. You are projecting your concern about a narrative that the author is not contributing to.
They could have gone more in depth, but I think it's important we keep it in our minds. A lot of Asian-American businesses are suffering because of racism around the Coronavirus.
> A lot of Asian-American businesses are suffering because of racism around the Coronavirus.
I've heard this fact before and immediately discarded it as most likely based only on anecdotal evidence.
I'd need to see unbiased data proving it as true. Specifically that Asian-American businesses are suffering more than other, similar businesses in the same geographic locations.
> immediately discarded it as most likely based only on anecdotal evidence.
Immediately? Without even thinking it through or investigating it? As a Chicagoan, I can cite this [1]. And I have seen it for myself since I live close to the area. Traffic has been back up, but nowhere close to what it was.
This is called anecdotal evidence. And yes, immediately. Although thank you for linking a source, even if it's anecdotal, and even if it directly acknowledges that traffic might be down also because of a double homicide in the area. And even if it doesn't address what traffic is like at restaurants outside of Chinatown in nearby areas. Etc.
True, it is not more than anecdotal because no one is really performing causal inference studies on this so that people can draw rigorous conclusions. It is however quite obvious to anyone who is actually physically present there and in other parts of Chicago, and quite obvious to the business owners who have to deal with the reality of a significant drop in business.
I have mixed feelings about embedding this point in the list, because even though I think it serves a worthy purpose it may impede the primary objective of slowing the spread of COVID-19 by making this resource less palatable to some.
We are already seeing that people assess the severity of COVID-19's spread through a partisan lens. I don't want this. I want the best possible response no matter what, because I am not willing to martyr my aging parents to make a political point.
At some point, you've got to decide whether the infrequent but actually-documented problem of people who are apparently of East Asian origin being singled out and in some cases even assaulted is more important to address than the possibility some people are so triggered by the idea of not being racist that they would avoid taking any pandemic prevention advice from somebody who also suggested not being racist.
I don't think anybody who considers physically assaulting a member of a group they themselves consider potentially contagious can be reasoned with at all. This is prime Darwin award material...
+1. The absence of racism will not improve the outcome of this virus in any way whatsoever. This is just the author trying to masquerade her opinion as science.
"Do not be careless" and "do not binge the news" are equally useless pieces of advice.
> The absence of racism will not improve the outcome of this virus in any way whatsoever.
Racism/xenophobia is an undesired 2nd-order effect. When people are in survival mode they only care about 1st-order effects, and every man/woman for him/herself.
It's understandable, yet this also causes damage to society in ways that cannot be foreseen. It entrenches selfishness and normalizes lack of empathy for others. When things return to normalcy, there will be a cost.
[1] https://ibb.co/gZDfgPy
Edit: Sorry, I didn't include the original source. I had taken a screenshot and couldn't find the original article. But the original data is from Mark J Handley [2] who is (non-medical) Professor of Networked Systems and part-time Roboticist at UCL. And the article I took the picture from is at [3] (I don't normally read the Daily Mail, I promise).
[2] https://twitter.com/MarkJHandley/status/1237119688578138112
[3] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8095299/Man-under...