Coronavirus ravages California’s Central Valley, following a cruel familiar path
latimes.com
latimes.com
I wonder if this a case of lockdowns delaying the inevitable, combined with the fact that many of those affected are in places with high population densities. If we are to learn anything from elderly care facilities in NYC, Sweden and Canada, it's that infected people need to be separated way out away from anyone in their home. The primary vector of infection is still the home, likely due to higher exposure if someone is sick.
Those are states I have personal friends in and so reason to follow them. I'm sure the rest of the country isnt much better off. For that matter, much of the world seems to be celebrating they are doing better than the US while ignoring signs that thier luck is running out.
It's nearly impossible to draw firm conclusions (obviously, though so many are trying), but to my non-expert eye it certainly seems like this virus just burns through areas until some threshold level is reached (either due to some form of immunity kicking in, or the local population getting sufficiently scared to take their own measures more seriously, or something else). And it looks more and more to me like there's only 2 kinds of places: those that have been hit already and those that will be hit. It's unclear if the lockdowns really did much beyond delaying the inevitable (which, to be fair, is what we were told they were supposed to do in the beginning - it was "slow the spread", not "stop the spread").
Even looking at other countries, areas that were being scolded for doing a bad job seem to be nearing the end of their curve while areas that were touted as doing successful mitigation measures are flaring up. And of course there's counter-examples to everything that can be found as well.
It's hard to shake the feeling that no one really has any idea and everyone is just guessing. Even mask usage isn't clear - in the US it is getting near universal recommendation from our experts, while quite a few European countries with their own experts are not recommending masks, saying that there's little proof that they help and possibly some evidence they may do harm. It's mind-boggling how little agreement there is, even on something relatively simple to do like wearing a mask (fwiw, we wear ours because intuitively it seems they should help and it's a simple thing to do if it helps in any way).
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/masking-lack-of-evidence-with-...
To be clear I am not arguing against wearing masks. It's just that issue isn't firmly settled and we need more research.
I went to a restaurant with some friends last weekend. "Do you have a mask" I was asked, a clothes pin holding my t-shirt around my face. The server said, "We'll give you one," and when I said I had a medical condition. He said, "That's fine," and I was glad that was it ... but I still felt so awkward and filled with anxiety and shame, even at our table where they weren't required. I just saw all the wait staff around and it made me my focus narrow and want to panic.
I think they have a negative mental effect and I think there's good scientific evidence they're not very useful:
https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/#masks-...
I probably will just switch to drive-up pickup for groceries and only go to outdoor seating restaurants for the rest of the summer.
We're creating a world of shame and judgement over wearing PPE, and on top of that, there are thousands of people out there with PTSD and Anxiety disorders, with deep, personal, sometimes traumatic reasons, for being unable to wear a face covering. We're making people who refuse feel like they're killing grandma even though there is science that says that's unlikely. We're creating a new religious belief.
A man in a Tim Horton's was pepper sprayed by a cop for not wearing a mask. Another Canadian man was shot by police.
History will not look kindly back on this period of our humanity.
I think this would happen anyway, because of psychological dynamics in group/societies (cases of public shaming, drives to and against conformism etc abound throughout history).
However in your particular case the issue is exacerbated by the fact that PPEs effectively became part of identity politics.
It's possible that quite a few people who are shaming you for not wearing a mask are doing so because they don't believe you're honest bout your medical condition and instead you're making this up in order to "stand your ground".
People are kinda silly; we all hope that people from "our side" of the political spectrum are not, but once identity politics dynamics kick in human beings tend to lose quite a bit of their rationality.
Even more than just being "hard to shake" it's really the only conclusion I can reach now. In the beginning we were told we had to wipe down our groceries and anything else we brought into our homes, and now they're saying that wiping down any surfaces is mostly pointless because it doesn't spread effectively that way.
It's a complete mess.
A large part of Europe (not to mention Asia) already dealt/is dealing with it significantly better than the US. I doubt it's a matter of luck.
Try to have a look at the statistics of Taiwan, South Korea, Germany, Norway, Thailand, Denmark: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Seems that some countries manage to _consistently_ keep the spread at a comfortable (for a lack of better word) level.
And Vietnam went 100 days without an new case and are now dealing with an outbreak they can't trace back to a source.
The US has ~60k daily new cases - that is, 642 new patients about every 15 minutes.
My point is Vietnam has been very strict about controlling for new cases and even then, a bunch popped up and they don’t know 100% how that happened.
Hell, even Italy now has only 12,474 active cases.
We're not even a year into a multiple year pandemic. Yes, it's great those countries have it under control now, but I don't feel comfortable assuming it will stay that way.
With the benefit of hindsight, it's very easy to cherry-pick factors that can be used to explain why one country seems to be doing well or poorly. But then you have to explain why the country next door seemed to do so differently.
That's not what I got from it. It pretty much showed that separating elderly from anyone else is really difficult. It failed in many countries. This because they're either with families, or they're with people whom take care of them.
> I wonder if this a case of lockdowns delaying the inevitable
Lockdown is to ensure the hospitals aren't overwhelmed. Many countries had to completely stop or delay certain activities. People avoided going to the hospital out of fear of catching anything.
It'll happen eventually isn't very compassionate IMO.
This was a big reason why things got very ugly in Italy, and to a lesser degree Spain -- a lot of working adults live with their (older) parents. They pick it up and might be able to shake it off or call out of work for a week, but they end up bringing it home to their elderly parents.
The US has this too, doubly so since the millennial generation is more likely to live at home than ever, but compared to places like Italy there are far fewer people living with their 60 year old mother and 80 year old grandpa, all in the same house.
I was at a hospital yesterday and the person screening every incoming visitor had their mask under their nose.
Even if it is "only delaying the inevitable", it bought 3+ precious months of gathering PPE, increased testing, and political change.
Yes. Political change. Mr. Trump is now wearing a mask: it took this long to convince people that masks are a good idea. If COVID19 has a 2nd wave, we're far more prepared now than we were back in March.
> The primary vector of infection is still the home
The primary vector of infection has BECOME the home, because we've shut down schools, restaurants and more. I'm not entirely sure if we can push the lockdown any further logistically than businesses / public spaces. The home remains personal responsibility.
Amazing you just assume it's inevitable.
New Zealand certainly proves it's not.
Aim higher.
This is an absurd comparison.
It also seems amazing that despite the nighttime protests/riots in Portland, that there's basically no cases there.
LA seems mostly the same the last 4-months except early on. There's now 100s of people on the street on the weekend eating outside like it's Europe. I've unfortunately been outside everyday since the pandemic started.
It was really just a matter of time before this started. They aren’t supplied masks, have to travel to work in crowded vehicles, etc.
What a world we live in.
I sorta "get" why some people don't want to. But why get angry at folks minding their business. Are they just projecting their fears of being wrong?
Also, one man's "animosity" is another's protest.
Obviously this does not justify boorish behavior, but I can certainly empathize with their sentiments.
We've also had incidents of utility workers being attacked by people who think 5G towers are being used to spread the (imaginary????) coronavirus, so that's a thing.
These aren't hypothetical questions. I genuinely do not understand these people or their behavior on any level and I never see any attempt at an explanation anywhere - here, social media, mainstream media, documentaries - you name it.
In these people, I theorize it's a badge of honor for them to be contrarian, and to be 'independent thinkers'. Which, in the abstract, is a good thing I guess - but where is the line? It's all phrased in a way that there is no 'proof' possible, because there is always an extra layer of 'but that's just what THEY want you to think!'.
I was at a (responsibly socially distanced, thank you) bbq yesterday where several highly intelligent, respected professionals were spouting... let's say... things with dubious intellectual justification. But hey, with some in that company being literally antifa t-shirt wearing activists, at least it's entertaining!
I think the key for conspiracy theories is that they find a kernel of truth that powerful people don't readily admit, and then fill in the information gaps with their own narrative.
I'd believe this answer if someone told me :). It's the same thing that fuels all of the fanboi-ism in tech. The "I'm insecure about my choice so I need to attack all of the other choices to feel better" behavior.
If a school demands a dress code, people go nuts. It's immediately suspected to be unfair, overly broad, racist, sexist, and ableist, probably invented by perverts who think too much about adolescent sexuality. If you tell them the dress code is a courtesy to others, kids and parents will get in your face and protest it. [0]
Masks solve a (big) problem in some (limited) situations -- mostly close contact. But the rules are written to be over-inclusive and inconsistent. It's a protection against the chance you're infected and don't know it. Some municipalities are demanding them outdoors, in sparsely-populated areas, and indoors with your family. You don't get to present your body how you want, and your communication is stifled.
Masks are a dress code for the face. I wear them. But some people are going to get angry.
[0] https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/13/17847542/students-wa...
But I think you hit the mark closer with that little hedge of "and conduct", at the beginning. This isn't about dress codes per se, it's about rules - many Americans simply hate rules and reflexively rebel against them. Any suggestion that one should make a sacrifice for the collective good is invariably met, from some quarters, with a kind of moral outrage - often accompanied with self-righteous rhetoric giving frequent mention to "freedom" and "liberty", and often "the Constitution" and "founding fathers" as well. The inability to make collective sacrifice is a huge social weakness that interferes with the formation of a civil society, and in my opinion it is, more than anything else, the reason America is handling the pandemic so poorly - not just in terms of the acute response, but also the very structure of society. For example, due to overwhelming distaste for the idea of paying to fix other people's problems even if it's manifestly better for society as a whole, there's no socialized healthcare, or functioning social safety net - both of which cause people in low-paying service jobs to drag themselves to work while fighting COVID-19.
Many would be angry about the overinclusive rule. It would be more about the message to others about safety than actual safety. “Let them help themselves, if they’re so risk averse,“ you might say.
In at least some places, “masks all the time” isn’t entirely about function. Do masks really work better in casinos and schools, but not churches and funerals? Or, as in Maryland this week, do they work differently in public schools and private schools?
People sense that the mask in some situations is partly about a certain kind of authority and conformity — and they don’t like to conform with their face and body.
We're hearing about this now because conspiracy theories about covid are _dangerous_ in a way that belief that the earth is flat are largely not. Another worrying one potentially coming up; a lot of people believe various conspiracy theories about vaccines, and this may become a serious issue if a viable covid vaccine becomes available.
> But in the more general case, people can use moral decisions to signal how moral they are. In this case, they choose a disastrous decision based on some moral principle. The more suffering and destruction they support, and the more obscure a principle it is, the more obviously it shows their commitment to following their moral principles absolutely. For example, Immanuel Kant claims that if an axe murderer asks you where your best friend is, obviously intending to murder her when he finds her, you should tell the axe murderer the full truth, because lying is wrong. This is effective at showing how moral a person you are – no one would ever doubt your commitment to honesty after that – but it’s sure not a very good result for your friend.
Letting people die of disease shows their commitment to "freedom" from ... masks and scientists.
Some people are just inherently reactive to threats, and respond better to request. A governmental recommendation and public awareness campaign would likely be more effective with these people than a law.
You have to use their natural rebelliousness to your advantage.
The various underlying reasons that brought these socioeconomic conditions forth (failing countries to the south of the US, exploitation of cheap labor in the US, endemic political infighting in the US, dependence of the countries on these people sending money back) make it unlikely that the US will ever control the virus.
It would require combative parties to come together to fix a whole host of issues that they failed to fix for over 40 years. The host of issues have just piled up and by now are a mile high.
It isn’t just covid-19 that the US is fighting against.
This is what has just happened in Melbourne, where private security services were apparently lax in their monitoring of people in COVID19 quarantine hotels, allowing it to spread to the community [1]
I'm very worried about friends and family in the Central Valley who have complicating health conditions.
Having said that, I have a question. Why does anybody think that masks actually help? I've basically been under the impression that masks are health theater that allows people to go on with life without being scared, though it doesn't actually do much of anything. Apparently I'm in the minority in thinking that.
But I put on a surgical mask, twist the side ear loop so that air comes out the side instead of the top (right at my eyes), and I ask myself what in the world it is supposed to be accomplishing. It's not like people are wearing properly fitted N95 masks, and even then, the way people are talking about micro droplets seems like they might get through just fine.
Masks are tremendously effective. They protect you from others a small amount, but protect others from you a huge amount. They are absolutely not theatrical.
When it comes to stopping transmission, we don't have to get 100% effectiveness. We just need to get the r-value below 1 and the disease will die out. It's a game if probabilities, not absolutes. Masks have a very low cost for the tremendous benefit they confer.
If you know of scientific studies that show that masks don't make a significant difference, please share them.
Here's a list of 70 scientific papers (including reviews/meta-analysis and individual studies) on the efficacy of masks: https://threader.app/thread/1279144399897866248
From the summary of results: "Medical masks were not effective, and cloth masks even less effective." I'm assuming that is referring to in hospital settings, but still... somehow they magically they work "in the community." Has anybody proposed or tested a reason for why they would work in one setting but not the other?
I saw no mention of controlling for how much time the participants (college students) spent with other people. Can we truly assume that wearing a mask had no other effect on the behavior of young people who are incredibly image-conscious and facing intense peer pressure to fit in? If I had to guess, the only thing they proved is that college students asked to wear masks will stay alone in their rooms more often than those not asked to wear masks. Of course, indirect benefits are still benefits. It is possible that something like this could happen when masks are mandated in public today. Meaning, mask mandates lead to people staying home more, which is obviously going to be effective. However, see next paragraph.
Another problem I saw immediately is that they were required to wear masks for long periods when in their dwelling, but not required outside of their dwelling. This, of course, is the opposite of what we are doing. What is the result of inverting the study practices?
They were studies on the flu. Can we assume the same effect on Coronaviruses?
From one study... "Generalizability limited to similar settings and age groups." Ok... so we're ignoring the paper's warnings about what we can learn from it?
In one study they were able to measure a decrease in flu-like-illnesses(ILI) with mask use, but it wasn't statistically significant, and it was only in the second half of the study (weeks 4-6). The summary ends with: "Neither face mask use and hand hygiene nor face mask use alone was associated with a significant reduction in the rate of ILI cumulatively." It then proceeds in the next sentence (the conclusion summary), to say, "These findings suggest that face masks and hand hygiene may reduce respiratory illnesses in shared living settings and mitigate the impact of the influenza A(H1N1) pandemic." Isn't this an example of a study what normally would be lampooned on this site? How exactly does the conclusion follow from the data?
Another study saw statistically significant reductions in ILI, but again, only in the second half of the study, and did not find statistically significant reduction in actual positive flu tests. It is summarized by: "Face masks and hand hygiene combined may reduce the rate of ILI and confirmed influenza in community settings. These non-pharmaceutical measures should be recommended in crowded settings at the start of an influenza pandemic." However, there was no control group that was just hand washing. Doesn't it seem much more reasonable to assume that the benefits are from hand-washing, rather than hand-washing and masks combined, since the mask-only group saw little to no benefit? And if so, why are we using this paper to prove that masks work?
Most of the studies have been done in high risk, high exposure situations. The high concentration and repeated exposure over extended periods of time greatly increase the chance of infection. This does not reflect the lower concentrations and shorter duration of most civilian exposures. It generally takes more than a single virus to actually result in infection.
Since there are indications that wearing masks does give you some protection and does give significant protection to those around you, why not accept the minor inconvenience and wear one?
This is precisely what I'm trying to find evidence of. So far, I've clicked through to one summary of the research, followed by three papers linked in there, which supposedly support the claim, and found that there is almost no support for those claims.
And as I already said above, I do wear one.
Edited to add: Also, I've been reading more and more articles questioning the claim that Coronavirus is mostly limited to the larger droplets.
That said, at this point wearing/'believing in' face masks is a political issue, not an evidence based rational choice. It's tribal signaling. Noboby really knows a or b, but choosing to believe a or b has become (yet another) aspect of identity politics. Which is what worries me the most, because now that position has become entrenched, regardless of whether we reach any conclusive findings at some point in the future.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8583925/The-land-no...
Not remotely surprising. The fake masks are basically dirty sponges stuck in the most important air stream.
[1] https://twitter.com/vaccinologist/status/1247510457323343874...
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016344532...
It might all be the workplace, but we just had a large jump in cases without the single workplace and we might have some of the same demographics as them.
This also works with the Wall Street Journal.
Note: this only works in mobile News+. It does not work on a Mac. Sometimes you can just open the newspaper in question from News+ on a Mac and simply find the story, but in this case I didn't see the story.
PS: you have to actually visit the URL in Safari. If you long tap on the link on HN to bring up the actions menu there is a share option there, but News+ is missing. News+ is only an option for sharing the URL Safari is actually on.
Suddenly makes me wonder how skeptical I should be of all our understanding of recorded history.
Looking at the veracity of previously recorded history is part of historiography as well.
I think skepticism of recorded history is healthy in general. Historians would probably agree.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero#Historiography
What scares me is that any large org -- facebook, instagram, AP News, Google, the BBC -- could just delete all of their archives, or get some sort of nasty randsomware that just deletes everything or rewrites everything. And that's just an automated thing; the 1984-syle deliberate rewrites could be done via an automated script or some next-gen GPT-3 thing.
Firstly, even if we focus only on the facts, reality is so complex and multifaceted that it is inevitable a historian must selectively omit material in order to communicate a story a public can understand, and this inevitably obscures the facts and pulls in the historian's own moral interpretations of what is worth communicating.
Secondly, although there may be people who study history for the love of uncovering past events without preconceptions or bias, they are funded by those that may not share the same goals. History is used to induce a sense of shared national identity in schoolchildren, demonize others to justify confrontation, and stir citizens into making personal sacrifices for the group. Even if all the events are true, how they are presented, interpreted, and selectively omitted can create wildly different opinions on the same historical event.
Ultimately, I think history is more a tool of social control than any objective study. A person unmoored from history will focus only on his immediate wants and needs. A person with some education in history will call upon historical grudges and pride in the heroism of those long dead to take part in social structures that far exceeds him in numbers and lifespan. Storytelling is what makes us social animals, and history is just a more believable form of storytelling. What really happened isn't valuable in itself but how it adds to the persuasiveness of that story.
I was told the CCP has the list of every video of skateboarding and memes I liked on the latter.
B) We are recording way more today than at any point in history. It is not like what is currently on Reddit and Tik Tok would have been published in books, with copies stored on slides and archived in libraries around the world. It would have been done in person (or never at all), and never written down in the first place.
In contrast, the coronavirus has killed at least 150k Americans over just five months.
The wikipedia page for the H3N2 pandemic also lists reasons as to why the death toll wasn't much higher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_flu#Mortality
Specifically:
"The pandemic did not gain momentum until near the winter school holidays, thus limiting the infection's spread."
If you think about it, this is the opposite scenario of today: our second wave is gaining momentum, and... we're reopening schools.
No, it's not..we're still in the first wave. Second wave is an illusion due to NYC’s high and early peak.
I don't think the CDC is lying to me.
That's why the wikipedia page I linked says "between 34,000 and 100,000" -- it cites the CDC.
P.S. The fact that you completely ignored everything else I said is duly noted.
and dragonwriter is responding to you and I'd rather not get in his way
This is a good example. Many of these people are illegal/undocumented persons who can't get benefits or medical treatment and can't afford to NOT work.
They're still vectors anyway.
The truth is that the US benefits from these workers and our economy would implode without them yet we vilify them and treat them horribly.
Covid is karma.
Also, you seem to equate being latino with being undocumented, which is not the case.
California created this situation through lax enforcement of immigration laws. It is less cruel to strictly enforce the law, as this prevents people from becoming second class residents.
It's not for states to enforce federal immigration laws. If enforcement is lax, that's a failing of the federal government. It's also a failing of the federal government that the path to legal immigration for many people is file some paperwork, then wait 20+ years for your turn.
For example, they passed SB 54, which prevents California law officers and agencies from assisting or sharing any information on illegal immigrants with the feds.
This is karma for being far too lax on immigration law (to the detriment of the American worker), not "treating criminals horribly".
Learn something about farming before you comment on it. You have no clue. Illegal aliens are the backbone of fruit and vegetable farming. Americans don't want these jobs.
Yeah, it’s not in great shape, but it’s not being ‘ravaged’.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/projects/california-coronavirus-case...
All said, even in Sac, you have some pretty dangerous behavior going on (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/churches-return-corona...), so this isn't entirely surprising.