I was the pessimist in my office cluster when we left the office for the last time in mid-March. The ACC basketball tournament in Greensboro, NC had just been cancelled midway through a play-in game. The news coming out of New York City was looking grim and and we knew that we had totally blown the early ability to test and trace as we had nowhere near enough testing capacity. Some of my colleagues thought we would see each other in person again after Easter. The median guess was around Memorial Day that we would be back in the office. I thought I would be back on a regular basis and working with my colleagues, getting cups of coffee with collaborators and brain storming with co-authors starting again today.
I had thought that we would mostly get the logistics of massive testing figured out. We have done that. However we are now running into significant logistical bottlenecks again and slowing down the test-assess-inform cycle makes each test far less valuable now than it could and should be.
BREAKING: Testing is about to reach capacity again nationally.
LabCorp the biggest lab has capacity for 130k tests/day (out of the 500k+/day) but with the run up in cases are now running 5 day wait times.
At 7 days, testing stops being of value. We may get there soon.
— Andy Slavitt @ ? (@ASlavitt) July 2, 2020
I had thought that late March and April would suck as we had built up a big base of unobserved and unknown cases that were actively infectious and those individuals were infecting new people until we had a massive bolus of future hospitalizations and deaths built up. At the same time, I had hoped that we would be able to rapidly respond to a disease with a well-established play-book: Break infection chains, first with overwhelming brute force of a sharp and near total lockdown where in person social interactions become rare and distant events and then once the infectious base shrinks, aggressively test-trace-isolate any individuals suspected of being plausibly infected. It would not be a pleasant lock-down period to get to the point where testing and tracing could be the effective and dominant control strategy while we waited for therapeutic, prophylatic and vaccine development, but the playbook has worked well in numerous settings and diseases.
Back in March we proposed our outbreak be managed by driving down transmission through stay at home policies while scaling up test trace isolate infrastructure until a handoff could be made. https://t.co/ESW3mZue22
— Caitlin Rivers, PhD (@cmyeaton) July 5, 2020
And that worked for April. We as a society did a damn good job of being careful and staying home. And it worked. We started breaking infection chains. We as a nation brought the Reproductive rate of the virus to well under one. We gave non-NYC metro area hospitals the breathing room to learn, to evolve, and to prepare without being overwhelmed.
And then we threw it away.
"I think right now we're where we were when New York City was having its peak epidemic," @ScottGottliebMD delivered one of his more dire forecasts of the #COVID19 pandemic on today's @FaceTheNation. We now have 4 major epicenters of spread: FL, TX, AZ, CA. Georgia a worry. pic.twitter.com/Le5xs0fNnQ
— margaret brennan (@margbrennan) July 5, 2020
Over the holiday, I was in a funk, a malaise. I was the pessimist in March and I was way too optimistic. We talked a lot about what the schools will do in the fall and how will the universities and colleges function? I don’t know. My wife and I are privileged enough that whatever the elementary and middle schools do, we can go with those decisions. Some decisions will be easier than others; my seven year old son really would benefit from being in a classroom at least some of the time. My eleven year old daughter can probably do well enough no matter what. I hope that my kids are in a classroom at least a week or two a month. But we can handle another semester of stay at home instruction or full return to school or the most likely hybrid mixture. I was the pessimist and I was way too optimistic.
zzyzx
When my office closed, I started a betting pool about when it would reopen. The pessimist said August 15. Now we can’t even get in to collect our personal items because an essential worker tested positive so the building is completely locked down again.
Ryan
Another semester? I salute your optimism.
marklar
@Ryan:
I teach at a residential college. When we came back from Spring Break, I told my students that I thought we’d be shutting down at the end of the week. That night, the college made the decision to do exactly that. In my final in-person classes of the semester, I told my students that I’ll be seeing them back in the classroom in the Fall 2021 semester, and that is if everything goes well with vaccine development. College campuses should be thought of as stationary cruise ships, albeit with even more hooking up between non-family members.
OzarkHillbilly
Everything trump touches dies.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: including our country
p.a.
When the pessimists are too optimistic…
Brendan in NC
I am of the opinion that I won’t be back in an office until at least June 2021. I spent a year working from home while they remodeled our old office, so I can do it again. But I tend to work better in an office setting, so motivation will become a big factor…
debbie
@Brendan in NC:
My motivation isn’t the problem; my office set-up is much better (two monitors, etc.).
gene108
The USA had given up in attempting to control the spread of COVID-19.
That is all there is to it. We just have to look out for ourselves.
Somehow, all sense of civic duty has gone to shit over the last twenty years. Enough people are like this that even those of us, who try to be civic minded get overwhelmed.
These are the most depressing parts of our failed attempts at ending novel coronavirus spread.
Ryan
@marklar: On top of that, you have a workforce that every day goes home to the environment in which the school is embedded. Hard to imagine restarting for the fall with case counts high and increasing.
JPL
Well put me in the naive category. It never dawned on me that the government (trump) would sit on his butt and do less than nothing. Rather than let companies send their masks overseas, he should have not only blocked that, but ordered more supplies to be made. He still should make masks mandatory but won’t.
Although I’m excited about the possibility of a vaccine, I remember the swine flu vaccine debacle. If one is available in the early fall, I’ll wait awhile before offering to be a guinea pig.
gene108
Sean Doolittle, Washington Nationals player has great insights into starting MLB this year.
Full interview remarks linked in the Tweet. Very concise summary of how screwed things are.
https://mobile.twitter.com/NBC4Sports/status/1279834882349453313
zhena gogolia
@gene108:
That last line is so intelligent.
David Anderson
@Ryan: I am not looking past Christmas.
Brendan in NC
@debbie: That too!! I’m a 1 monitor guy; but I’m currently working off a small kitchen table. I live in a small (484 sf) condo, and I’ve got everything planned out; but will need to run electrical and cable upstairs. And that’s not happening any time soon.
prufrock
I had a COVID test last Monday. It took until Thursday to get the results (thankfully negative). I was impressed how well or local hospital group (Baycare) manged to process a long line of cars, but that will all be for nought if the labs are overwhelmed.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@JPL: I would have expected Trump to do something if only because he wants to be re-elected. Is it really possible that he can do that just by saying nothing to see here, let’s move along? Surely reality will slap him in the face?
David Fud
We just put our children in the GA Cyber Academy to avoid the inevitable school shutdown and disruption. Our county did not take advantage of the time to plan a better way to deliver K-12 education and we therefore decided, rather than having our kids miss another semester of learning, we had to work with a school that has delivered education online in the past, that has plans and has a track record.
I am completely done with the shit planning all of our governments have done in response to this crisis. When the embers of this disease burn out, my family will emerge again and not until then.
To be clear, I can do this because of the infrastructure we have built up in our family operations and I know that we are privileged. I can’t look out for everyone when the government abdicated its duty for the common good. It makes me sick with grief and anger at what we have decided to become in this country.
Cheryl Rofer
David, I’m with you. In March, when things shut down and everyone was hoping for a month, I was thinking at least two months, but we would be able to remove restrictions sometime in the summer.
Not near pessimistic enough.
Now I see serious restrictions persisting well into next year, with the next six months perhaps worse than we’ve seen. More partying over this weekend.
School will be nothing like normal. I hope the colleges and universities can be persuaded about that. The University of Georgia currently plans for regular classes, no masks. That is insane. Every time the military tries to get basic training back to normal, most of the class tests positive. No college or professional sports – they’re all getting sick.
And very few people are even thinking about the economic consequences.
I don’t say much about my pessimistic expectations because I’m simply not up to fighting with people. But every one of my expectations has been on the nose or too optimistic.
Sab
@debbie: My office set-up is so much better, but nobody will wear masks, and when the govenor slowly opened things up they were all chomping at the bit to get back to normal activities. So no way will work in that office again with those folks. They really don’t believe that they can get it because so far nobody has.
Baud
This seems relevant (NYT Magazine)
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
We were alternating days in the office after our reopen. Cases in the county ticked up, the entire county is now under a mandatory mask order, and we got sent home again. Don’t see anything changing anytime soon.
Barbara
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I have been thinking this for a while. At first I was inclined to attribute the monumental incompetence to wishful thinking, failure of imagination or just plain sociopathic tendencies — but increasingly it looks as if it is either delusional or willful. Useful idiots like Mitch Daniels are already trying to preempt the harsh verdict partly because they know how harsh it should be. (“When this is all over we should avoid pointing fingers at anyone. After all, we are trying to do our best.” Like fucking hell we are.)
Amir Khalid
Testing, one two three.
Raoul Paste
This business about Laboratory delays making the tests worthless is pretty gobsmacking
The Thin Black Duke
Why in the hell won’t stupid people shut up, mind their own damned business and stay the fuck out of the way?
Amir Khalid
@Amir Khalid:
A brief 503 error eated one of my comments. I think that was for the best.
Eric U.
I was hoping the leadership at Penn State would do the right thing or at least wait until someone smarter than them came up with a good plan. It looks like they have gone with business as usual until Thanksgiving and let the bodies fall where they may otherwise. No testing plan has been announced, so we’ll probably have an outbreak starting a week after the students get back to class. The first student died of covid last week, I can’t see how he will be the only one.
Uncle Cosmo
Except it doesn’t go near far enough.
A functioning society is its own reward. It allows us to feel the camaraderie of sharing a sporting event or a celebration, and the comfort of social intimacy in times of trouble, without risking infection or abuse or bodily harm.
The pandemic has shown – if anyone with a brain has doubted it since 2016 – that the USA is not a functioning society. Nearly 1/3 of the country has no idea how to be a good citizen in a pluralistic democracy. They ape smash&grab end-stage capitalist culture, grabbing the profits/privileges for themselves while imposing the costs/responsibilities onto any part of the population they can.
Suzanne
@Barbara:
I have been thinking about how, in a few months to a few years, I have a feeling that everyone will deny having voted for Trump. It will be too shameful to admit. I am tempted to go back on Facebook and Twitter or whatever so we can remind people how stupid/mendacious/both they are when they invariably deny it.
Amir Khalid
deleted.
Bob Hertz
The classic strategy proposed by David was indeed effective in Singapore, Hong Kong, and on islands like Hawaii and Iceland and New Zealand……
“rapidly respond to a disease with a well-established play-book: Break infection chains, first with overwhelming brute force of a sharp and near total lockdown where in person social interactions become rare and distant events and then once the infectious base shrinks, aggressively test-trace-isolate any individuals suspected of being plausibly infected. It would not be a pleasant lock-down period to get to the point where testing and tracing could be the effective and dominant control strategy while we waited for therapeutic, prophylatic and vaccine development…..”
Would it ever have worked in a nation as large and as libertarian as America?
I have my doubts….
Soprano2
@Suzanne: Oh, I figure that within three months of him losing they’ll all try to deny ever supporting him at all! We’ve got the receipts of their posts online, though. Either that, or his cult members will migrate to whatever media organization he establishes and all continue to worship him.
TS (the original)
I would like the details of what the fed is doing to keep the stock market up as I have no doubt they will stop as soon as it is obvious the GOP is going to lose the election. With the pandemic & unemployment & lack of any type of government from this administration, the markets should be tanking.
This action from the fed and manipulation of the markets is why so many say the GOP are better at economic management.
Punchy
Fixed to include Missouri colleges.
David C
On Wednesday, March 11th, I went home, looking forward to two days of telework but with enough materials to allow for an extension. On Thursday I emailed my choir director and said I wasn’t coming in – the tenor next to me is pushing 90 and i was concerned because I took public transportation. By Friday morning NIH had not made a decision but I had decided to not come in a Monday no matter what. They called it that weekend and I’ve only been back to give blood (with one side trip to pick up more supplies).
Management is calling for a phased return, maybe starting in August, but I don’t see coming in for more than one day a week for the next 6 months.
On the other hand, the pathology and the similarities to radiation sickness are fascinating and may point to new treatments to both, but I am seeing a piecemeal approach – not like the Recovery trial in the U.K. I saw a link to an article by Lu Borio challenging the utility of a lot of clinical trials – one such trial from a Henry Ford is being touted as proving that hydroxychloroquine works.
Maybe this was from Anne:
https://www.biocentury.com/article/305565/21st-century-pandemic-prehistoric-clinical-trials
raven
@Cheryl Rofer: It’s the University System of Georgia not just UGA. It’s a Board of Regents policy decision and 328,712 students are subject to their jurisdiction.
Uncle Cosmo
For the decade I worked in chem-bio defense, much of my job was to put on a Black Hat & build scenarios of what the bad guys might do to our guys in the White Hats. With that in mind, I conjecture –
He’ll be lying through his teeth, of course, but unless the Democrats are prepared to very quickly do the hard work of uncovering and publicizing the deception – with almost no cooperation from the MSM, & none at all from whatever probably-bogus company has supposedly developed it – he & that bunch of Nazis around him) intends to ride that Comey-shaped horse’s arse to a second term.
(And I devoutly hope I’m wrong.)
mad citizen
@Barbara: Reading along to the usual BJ posts and come across THIS (not directed at you personally of course)–my former governor. Fuck Mitch Daniels. What an asshole. He is supposed to have a deal as President of Purdue University not to engage in politics. Will have to rage read his ridiculous column later–I took a vacation day today.
RAM
“We” didn’t throw away the gains made early on through sheltering at home, social distancing, and then wearing masks. Trump did it, and he seems to have done it on purpose in concert with his GOP governor acolytes. His actions during this pandemic–enabled by the GOP–have been indistinguishable from what they would have been if he had been purposefully working with a foreign power to kill as many Americans as possible.
It’s as if when the Japanese invaded the Aleutians in 1942, FDR would have told the Alaskan territorial government that they were on their own and would have to buy their own military equipment to fight the invaders–and by the way the federal government would be bidding against them with suppliers and would seize whatever equipment they felt like.
There has never been a worse example of the federal government’s abdication of its clear duty under the Constitution to protect the nation in U.S. history. Trump makes France’s Vichy government look like Joan of Arc.
mad citizen
@Uncle Cosmo: I’ve come to the place of not being very worried about the Pres. election result. I think it’s already cooked. Enough people are motivated to vote, and enough people finally realize (did it have to take all of this?) what a con artist/lazy BS artist the orange one is. Not to mention the progression of the dementia or whatever it is.
Punchy
@Uncle Cosmo: I’ve told the wife to expect this very thing. No matter what the actual status of the vaccine development is (and I work in the pharma manufacturing biz, and I can tell you there’s NO WAY they can ramp up manufacturing fast enough for publicly available doses to be ready by election day), Trump is going to announce it anyways.
It’ll be fascinating and potentially disturbing to see just how much pushback and honesty is provided by whatever pharma company is supposed to have produced it. I would think that protection of company reputation would preclude such chicanery, and force the company to “correct” such obvious BS. But who knows…..maybe the WH will set up some deal to buy their vax for eleventy trillion dollars with the understanding that no one publicly corrects these idiot proclamations.
snoey
@Uncle Cosmo: Early and mail voting blunts this. Can’t last minute surprise a voter who has already voted. We need to work this hard.
MomSense
I’m ready to quit my GD job because no one will wear masks. Of course if I do I won’t get unemployment and I’ll end up totally fucked. So I stick it out and pray I don’t get it and bring it home.
We have encouraged selfish behavior for decades and this is the result.
The Thin Black Duke
@mad citizen: I agree with you. By November, everybody in the country will have been impacted by the pandemic. Everybody will know of someone who lost their job, got evicted, went bankrupt or died. By November, everybody is going to want someone in the government to fix this shit and everybody will know that it ain’t Trump.
Bunter
@debbie: When my job went work from home, IT was willing to loan me a double monitor but I didn’t have room for it so instead I cabled my laptop into my TV and use that as my monitor for work that requires a bigger screen.
Jamie
@mad citizen: Every time the Purdue Alumni Association calls me asking for money, I ask them if Mitch Daniels is still president of the university. When they tell me yes, I patiently explain that I will give them no money while he’s still there. They have been surprisingly understanding.
Barbara
I meant to post this here. I did email the thread to David, so he can use it if he wants. But others might be interested in looking at the Pennsylvania guidelines. Basically, what I was told is that Arizona has started implementing CSC — crisis standards of care. That’s truly ominous, particularly for Arizona’s indigenous population and low income minorities. Arizona Guidance
The Pennsylvania guidelines came across my desk after an especially heated discussion on the health law forum about CSC in general. Pennsylvania guidance for allocating scarce resources encourages hospitals to take structural disadvantage into account, e.g., being an essential worker or a similar situation that restricts the opportunity to successfully engage in social distancing. Source
This makes a lot of sense to me. For instance, I have no difficulty working remotely, and even though I do observe distancing and wear masks, anytime I leave my house I am, essentially voluntarily assuming a certain level of risk. I think that can be legitimately viewed as an objective ethical distinction in allocating scarce resources should I become sick, versus a grocery store worker or someone living in a multi-generational living situation.
Barbara
@Bob Hertz: No, it would never have worked AS WELL. I knew that we would never be able to duplicate the success of New Zealand or Korea. But we could have gotten much closer to France or Germany or Japan with leadership at the federal level setting minimum standards for state governors, with governors able to exceed but not undermine federal levels of protection. That Trump did not do that, did not even try and in fact actively undermined those who did try is all on him. All. On. Him.
mad citizen
@Jamie: This makes me happy!
StringOnAStick
Folks, it easy to see why the administration is not trying to contain this, just look at the stats of who it is killing: predominantly people of color. I’m sure Stephen Miller is beside himself with joy at what history has placed him in control of. Sure, some white people will die but more POC will so it’s a bargain they’re willing to make. I’m sure that in the future we’ll find obvious evidence that they actively enabled as much infection and dysfunction as possible. It serves their ends.
Uncle Cosmo
@snoey: Point well taken. “Vote early & vote often.” (J/k about the last part.)
Besides making sure our voters will be able & eager to vote, mMaybe we should be making an extra effort to “inoculate” them against any quick hype of some unverified “magic bullet” conveniently appearing right around election time.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Eric U.: Jesus. I have a cousin who teaches at Penn State – he’s the closest thing I have to a brother. But, who knows if I’ll make it that long. My wife is an NP at Children’s Hospital in DC. She was doing telemedicine only from late March until a couple weeks back but they have now brought her back into the office to do in person exams. She’s primary care and the place had decided that well child physicals must resume. I mean, I know there are acute cases – some sort of infection or minor injury – where an in person exam is necessary and they have to have providers treating those cases…but they’re doing the well child physicals to prep for the upcoming school year, which is bonkers because there’s no way that is happening. Unless we just decide to completely give up as a country and whoever dies, dies. So far nobody in her clinic has come down with a case, which is somewhat comforting, but I kind of feel like it’s only a matter of time.
StringOnAStick
As soon as the stimulus runs out at the end of this month and evictions start rising, there’s a whole cohort of the economically insecure who will lose their address and thus their ability to vote this fall. There’s the reason why McTurtle won’t allow any more stimulus to individuals.
In the 2008 meltdown, a good deal of entry level homes in this city and I’m sure in others ended up in foreclosure and were bought by investment groups and REITs. That has a lot to do with why affordable entry level homes are in such short supply here (and because builders make more building higher cost homes). The investment class is looking at the coming evictions and foreclosures as not only another huge bite at the upward wealth transfer apple but also as a voter suppression scheme.
stinger
David, this is a classic post. The middle section, about the “well-established playbook” and how well it worked while we adhered to it, is information I’d like to share with friends who haven’t yet grasped the big picture. You are so good at this kind of explanation!
JMG
My daughter in France has resumed normal activities. She has (small) dinners with friends. She can go to restaurants. She can travel within the country and other EU countries. She has worked back in her office for several weeks without incident (she did much work from home even before the virus, due to the time difference and her responsibility for sales in the US). I cannot even go see her, and she cannot come here because she’s not sure as a non-French citizen they’d let her back in. This is total societal failure on our part. Oh, well, gotta get the gear on for the weekly visit to the town dump. The workers there have both N95 masks AND face shields. Also black rubber gloves up their the elbows. They are taking no chances and I don’t blame them.
Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA)
Never mind. I’m sure there’ll be a post shortly.
StringOnAStick
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: I have a good friend who has a RW evangelical brother who refuses to wear a mask unless it’s a federal law. That brother just cut short he and his wife’s two week camping trip because he’s “come down with the flu but I’m sure it’s not Covid” because the rural, low population and extremely white valley they live in had had no cases though they haven’t been there for almost two weeks. They’ve been traveling all over western CO and eastern UT sans masks, getting groceries and gas. Somehow I think their rural home town is about to have some cases now, helpfully imported by my friend’s idiot brother and wife. I heard they refuse to get tested because their faith says they don’t have it. Probably their racism says that too. This is a perfect example of how and why infection rates are going up.
artem1s
@marklar:
true, but campuses were the leaders in containing H1N1 outbreak when we had leadership on how to educate the campus population on the basics of test, track and quarantine. The whole Florida Spring Break Superspreader Death Party and Student Escape From Europe disasters could have been avoided if the Governors, Boards of Regent, and Association of College Presidents had gotten some leadership from the Federal Agencies on how to prioritize keeping their students quarantined and from adding to the initial spread. It’s not too late to use the fall campus reopenings to our advantage, but those states with R-Governors are probably aren’t going to prioritize student body safety over say, TV revenue from football.
Zinsky
David – I feel your pain, except I am retired and am therefore well qualified to do nothing all day, every day. Just kidding… I don’t think COVID-19 begins to become less of an issue until fall of 2021. I think a vaccine will be developed, but will only last for a while and many numbskulls will not take it even if it does work. Pray that you and your family can get a safe, effective dose by September of 2021. Until then, I plan to lay very low, mask with an N95 whenever I go out in public and socially distance with everyone except my wife. Good luck. The next 15-18 months are going to be very cruel….
Suzanne
@StringOnAStick: I drove from PHX to PGH in four days in the middle of May, and the regional differences in mask-wearing were shocking. I remember getting lunch in Joplin, MO, and being surprised to see that no one besides SuzFam were masked. Then I read yesterday that Joplin is having an outbreak. Yep.
Oklahoma City will be next, dollars to donuts.
Hoodie
@Barbara: Yeah, I’m getting pretty sick of this particular “libertarian” rationalization for doing nothing. A lot of European countries are pretty civil libertarian. You want a population that doesn’t believe anything its government tells it, think France. They strike about everything, but somehow they managed to unite to slow down the spread of the disease. Italy is a corrupt, politically fragmented mess, but they managed to do it as well. Same with Spain. Greece. There are at least a dozen examples.
No, the biggest problem here is an active disinformation campaign by Trump and certain elements of the GOP. They’ve sown confusion throughout the population as to the severity of the disease and what’s needed to defeat it.
NotMax
@Suzanne
Seem to remember you expressing some second thoughts prior to leaving; would wager skedaddling out of AZ looking pretty good about now.
;)
Frankensteinbeck
@Uncle Cosmo:
I’m not worried about that at all. Trump went from bump to precipitous polling drop when everyone realized he was lying about all the stuff he was doing against the virus. He fucks up everything. Every time he pulls some popularity stunt it not only comes back to bite him, it does so within 48 hours. Even his own supporters don’t trust him, they just trust that he hates who they hate. Odds are huge he’ll try at least one October Surprise, and it will fizzle like a sparkler in the ocean.
Suzanne
@NotMax: I am SO HAPPY that I am not there right now. Though case counts in Allegheny County have gone up dramatically, they’re seeing no increases in deaths so far. And Pennsylvanians seem to be much more compliant with masks.
ETA that I was hesitant about multi-day road travel during the plague, but I was not hesitant about leaving AZ itself. You should have seen my plague kits that I packed in each vehicle.
The Moar You Know
The rage and hostility I got at my workplace when I said “2022 at the earliest” at the management meeting before we all went home for a long time was something to behold, but I had a secret weapon; knowledge.
Ex-girlfriend of mine used to work bioterrorism at a slew of three-letter agencies. Retired last year. Which she is pretty happy about. She knows this shit.
The list of diseases for which we have still been unable to create a vaccine for is both impressively long and scary. Human victory is by no means a guaranteed outcome. A quick victory is an unlikely outcome. That being said, there are some really good signs that we may catch a lucky break with this one.
So, 2022 with 10 million US deaths. That’s my entry in the pool
@JPL: It never occurred to my ex’s task force either. All their modeling (and those are grim enough as it is) had quarantines and PPE and massive government response as built in assumptions. The idea that a government would literally do nothing was never run, as it was considered impossible.
Barbara
@marklar: No, they should not, because their enterprise is far more essential to the individuals involved. Why people won’t make this distinction is beyond me. It is far more important that we reopen schools and universities than cruise ships. That means they should NEVER be equated. Not on any level.
schrodingers_cat
It is more than incompetence it is incompetent malevolence. Every step of the way more Americans have died because of his actions. And now that New England and the northeast has bent the curve he will arrive as a human bio-weapon with his followers to make sure that our infection rate increases.
Suzanne
@The Moar You Know: It just astonishes me that the Sentient Corpse Flower legitimately thought that being the president was always easy and fun.
I swear to God. He really thought this.
Gravenstone
@The Moar You Know: I’ve been saying all along that it would be at least 18 months before we had a reasonable vaccine and/or treatment regime plus the supplies needed to effectively roll it out. Unfortunately, that 18 months continues to be a moving window so your 2022 assessment is now just entering its scope.
David C
@Punchy: I saw that Hahn refused to commit, so maybe he will be absorbing, but not transmitting, the pressure for the FDA to cut corners.
Bob Hertz
@Barbara: good points, thanks. From my reading, I have the impression that Japan did very little testing and tracing and never had a lockdown…. but they inhibited the virus by absolutely everyone wearing masks in public.
frosty
@Suzanne: I saw your comment yesterday that your in-laws (?) wanted to rent an RV when they visit. We’ve taken our trailer to visit our son in PGH. There aren’t a lot of good campgrounds near there unfortunately. We’ve stayed at Raccoon Creek State Park to the west and Mountain Top Campground (private) to the northeast and liked them both.
ET
I work in a library. I knew we wouldn’t be back by Easter and was about 98% sure we wouldn’t be back by Memorial Day. I have always thought that staff would be back just about Labor Day plus or minus and I think that holds. But again, that is staff only.
I don’t think patrons will be allowed back in until late September at the earliest and that will not look like it did when we shut the door in mid-March. Appointments, limited numbers whatever. Open for coming in going on a whim, no.
Brachiator
@gene108:
A simple, plainly stated, and extremely painful truth.
It is painful to watch our supposed national leaders just throw up their hands and quit, because they are afraid of trying to control this thing. And Trump is more concerned about looking good than doing a damn thing.
And it is infuriating to see Republicans and fools protect Trump and give him cover as he runs and hides from the virus.
In the long run, this will not work. We, as Americans, love to believe that we can figure things out on our own. But fighting this pandemic requires co-operation, actively working together.
We can only do this effectively if we throw the bums out and get in a government that can properly mobilize resources.
Taken4Granite
The University of New Hampshire plans to be open for business this fall, though they have made some concessions to COVID: no triples or quads, move-in spaced over three weeks rather than the usual three days (normally, first-year students move in the Friday before the start of the fall semester, and upperclassmen that Sunday), and in-person classes to finish by Thanksgiving with final exams/final projects being done remotely. My confidence in this going as planned is about nil.
But I understand why they, and so many other state university systems, are planning on in-person classes in the fall: money. Universities lost a lot of money when COVID disrupted the spring semester, and too many states underfund their state university systems. One obvious consequence of COVID is that one of their previous cash cows, international students (they pay full out of state tuition and are generally not eligible for financial aid), is unavailable. Even if the students can get visas (which the administration is trying to prevent), only a handful of top-tier universities in this country will be worth the risk.
It doesn’t help that President Scheisskopf wants to have a rally in Portsmouth, which is 20 minutes away from UNH.
Robert Sneddon
@Bob Hertz: Japan didn’t have a mandated lockdown but the government made a strong suggestion that people carry out social distancing, offices and shops should close and the Japanese being Japanese did so. This helped a lot.
The masks commonly seen in pictures being worn in Japan and elsewhere in the Far East are often not worn to prevent the spread of disease but to reduce exposure to allergy-triggering pollens during the spring and early summer. The rest of the year they’re not worn much, especially in hot humid weather.
The Moar You Know
@Punchy: They already did. It’s that “Operation Warp Speed” bullshit. It’s why so many no name pharma companies signed onto that – they need the fed money.
Brachiator
@Uncle Cosmo:
Trump can announce whatever he likes. Anyone with half a brain will look to see if the CDC and other health officials confirm this. Unless Trump replaces Fauci and others with puppets, this will not happen.
And so far, not even the worst of the MSM, with the exception of Fox News, simply parrots Trump’s nonsense without some context.
If Trump is defeated in November, Democrats will have to push hard to immediately assume responsibility for dealing with the virus. If Trump stubbornly refuses, then a new administration will have to be able to move quickly after inauguration.
piratedan
we’re going to struggle until the GOP is replaced/removed from the levers of power. While Trump is himself an enormous vortex of suck, remember, we have bills awaiting debate in the Senate that could help that were crafted in Congress. Will the GOP leadership in the Senate do anything about them… no. They probably won’t even be allowed onto the floor for debate.
While Trump is indeed the elephant in the room, that the media willingly ignores, they also refuse to acknowledge the existence that the room is in a building constructed by the GOP itself.
The Moar You Know
@ET: I’m really more than fine with the end of the public library as the de facto homeless shelter of California. We have a great one in our town, and I haven’t set foot in it since 1984 save to get the card updated, look around, be appalled, and leave.
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
He still thinks this.
Brachiator
@Taken4Granite:
It is hard to see that universities will be able to successfully open and function, but we will see what happens and how their plans are carried out.
I wonder how colleges will identify and protect students, faculty and staff who may have underlying conditions?
And what procedures they will have to test, trace and isolate any people on campus who become infected with the virus.
Fraternities should be treated like prisons, nursing homes or military vessels, with specific provisions to limit community spread of the virus.
I have no idea how colleges can carry out social and athletic activities.
I also hope these places have disaster plans in place should they have to shut down and send everybody home.
And K-12 schools? No idea how they will be able to function if they insist on re-opening.
low-tech cyclist
@marklar:
I am SO stealing this.
low-tech cyclist
@Brachiator:
Cross-country teams could still compete: I was a cross-country runner in HS, and you don’t spend much time at all near other runners once past the starting line.
Can’t see how most sports will work, assuming college itself can be made somewhat safe.
My son’s in middle school, and I have no idea what the fall will look like.
I can only see distance learning widening the gap between the kids of more advantaged parents like my wife and me (and it was challenging enough for us this spring), and parents who can’t do their jobs from a computer at home, parents who never got past HS, etc.
And OTOH, it just seems that making K-12 schools relatively safe for in-class education would cost a lot of extra money at a time when school budgets are strapped because ALL state and local budgets are strapped, and Mitch McConnell (may the good Lord throw his rotten soul into purgatory for a few millennia) wants to bankrupt the lot of them.
low-tech cyclist
I was at the ‘more pessimistic’ end of the scale back in March, and I too wasn’t pessimistic enough.
My boss and I had an email exchange on March 12 as we were shutting down where he guesses we might be out until mid-April, and I responded, “If we’re lucky, we might be back by June.”
June’s come and gone, of course, and we’re not coming back for at least another month. And I doubt it’ll happen that fast, even.
PST
@Baud: The Leibovich article about interviewing Hillary in Toledo brought back some traumatic memories. My wife and I, both natives, decided to go there to ring doorbells for a few days before the election and then drive voters (her) or poll watch (me). We were both pretty confident, but we still wanted to help somewhere more dicey than Chicago. That night was as miserable as 2008 had been joyous. Ohio is now even further noon the path of turning into Indiana. We want to do something this year, but knocking on strangers’ doors is probably off the agenda.
Another Scott
@low-tech cyclist: I thought I was being reasonably pragmatic when, on March 13, I signed up for teleworking with an estimated end date of September 30. There’s no way this is going to be effectively over by October 1…
Cheers,
Scott.
Bill Arnold
@Robert Sneddon:
Oh come on. The masks being worn in Japan now, at about 85-95 percent level outside when looking at very recent images on google images (minus old stock photos), are in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. (Don’t have enough indoor photos to sample, but it looks like a higher level of mask discipline.)
Interesting history piece on masks in Japan. Bold mine.
The history behind Japan’s love of face masks – Are face masks effective in the fight against COVID-19? The nation’s experience with such products throughout history may provide some clues
glc
Really bad idea, for the seven year old. You need to construct a social bubble with at least one other young child in it, that is isolated from the rest of the community, as far as possible. Kind of impossible if the 11 year old is going to school, I can’t think of any reasonable way to begin to balance their needs.
My grandchild is supposed to enter school next fall and observe social distancing at age five. This does not bother me very much because the planning is so unrealistic I don’t actually expect anything of the kind to happen.
I have no solutions. When you are skidding on ice you just observe – I’ve been in that situation. Eventually, in that instance, the ice ended, and I turned the car 90 degrees, in the direction of the road, and everything was fine.