Thoughts about Covid-19

The Covid-19 is tragic, but still interesting, To me it is similar to a hurricane or terrible earthquake. It destroys lives and kills people and nobody can stop it.

Governments do a lot to help, but governments don't have the answers. NOBODY has the answers. If health scientists and experts propose plans that ruin a nation's economy or national security or system of education they are speaking from the point of view of an outsider who isn't responsible for leading the economy or education or national security. We don't need plans that just don't work because they can't be done,

People in the USA don't want to be locked up at home anymore. They just won't do it anymore. Many of them don't want to wear a mask or keep social distances. And that is in spite of current rates of infection being ten times worse that it was three months ago.

So I can't see what is going to happen.

Seems to me that Covid is winning right now.

And I have never said that the main reason we have more positive tests is because we are now testing more. In my opinion we don't test enough. We don't have enough testing capacity and have NEVER had enough testing capacity. If it was up to me every person in this country would be tested once a week. 

In the USA we took a big step backwards in terms of Covid on Memorial day weekend when everyone went out and celebrated and did NOT wear masks or observe social distancing. Then we did it again with civil rights protests and again on the 4th of July. We asked for it and we got it.

I have followed the pandemic here is Alabama closely. It is bad, real bad. Yet about half the people in the state still won't wear a mask in the stores when they go shopping. They just won't. I am not sure why....

I think masks are very important and helped in my country.

I wear a mask when I go in a store. And I wear a mask at work and church.

Kudos.

I would hypothesise that it is because they make decisions in an inappropriate way. Perhaps they think "Do I feel like I want to wear a mask? No, it sounds awkward and uncomfortable and I might look silly and I can't be bothered to get one - why should I have to? - so no I won't wear one".

Better decisions would be based on thinking more like "Every person who wears a mask is reducing the chance of them spreading Covid-19 by a factor of more than 10, and reducing the change of catching Covid-19 by a factor of 2. I don't want to spread Covid-19 if I am unfortunate enough to get infected, because this is bad for others, and I don't want to catch Covid-19, so reducing chances by a factor of 2 is a boon. I also want everyone else to wear masks, because that will keep me much safer."

Effective governments take advice from scientists like that incorporated in the latter and use that to define policy for everyone, because left to themselves a large fraction of people never think like that, but rather think like the first example.

Worse still is when people think like the first example, then ignore or fight policies based on the rational pragmatism of the second way of thinking, based on ignoring the reasoning completely. This occurs when people have an inappropriate rejection of expertise and inappropriate lack of trust in government informed by expertise.

What I don't understand is people who claim wearing a mask is "oppression". No, protecting yourself from a virus that could potentially kill you or people you know is not oppression, it's common sense. People seem to claim everything is "oppression", regardless of their political affiliation. Worse, people have turned to conspiracy theories to convince themselves that the pandemic isn't real. I know denial of a severe situation like a pandemic is a psychological way of coping with grief/shock, but lying to yourself (and others) isn't going to do anyone any favors. 

I agree the USA is way behind on this. I don't really believe in absolutely mandating everyone to wear a mask, but I do believe it is the right of businesses/other establishments to refuse those who don't wear masks. You can make whatever decisions you want, but there will be consequences.

Dr. Fauci has made the sensible point that that states with out of control Covid-19 should accept reality and consider reimposing a shutdown. It never really made sense to loosen restrictions with the transmission ratio (R) not well under 1. The prospect of allowing the outbreaks to grow and grow is alarming (especially with intensive care already overloaded.

England has R dangerously close to 1 and the government has already added a legal requirement to wear masks in shops to help keep it down (there was already one in place for public transport, plus a raft of other measures still in place as business returns to an approximation of normal).

Some people think that a lockdown is worse than the virus. 

I can see that point of view when so many people have few or mild symptoms. If the virus gets bad enough then it will clearly be worse than the lockdown.  Right now most Americans think the lockdown is worse. 

Who am I to judge for others?

It's a matter of whether you think its acceptable to kill off an uncertain percentage of your state. Not sure exactly how many it would be if medical services become completely inadequate.

Projections for Alabama suggest broad use of masks could control the epidemic well, but with easing of restrictions, there is no end in sight.

Today I heard a government leader speak about the virus. He said that looking at the infection rate or number of cases are the wrong thing to look at. He said that if people have no symptoms at all there is no need to see that as a problem so the number of cases is not what we should measure. He said that we should look at the number of people hospitalized of number of deaths.

I mostly don't agree with that, but it is an example of how so many people look at the same situation and see different things.

I shake my head wondering how so many people can have so much information and yet still have so many different views of what is going on..... 

You want to listen to scientists rather than politicians. They have a much more objective viewpoint and there is a great deal of agreement on the facts. They take new information and understanding on board much more quickly and understand the modelling of the systems concerned (or at least believe some other scientist who does!) Mathematical modelling of real world systems is very much my thing.

For example, I can point out that a big flaw in your quoted person's thinking is the fact that large numbers of cases mean exposure to even larger numbers of people. The key problem is growth of the epidemic - if it was severe and stayed small, it would be no big deal. With constant conditions, there are roughly speaking only two possibilities - a growing epidemic that would continue doing so until it his huge, and a declining epidemic. R is the transmission rate, and the two depend on whether R is greater or less than 1.

Some people just don't understand statistics. Or they just down't want to see the truth. 

Heck, back in March and April, the numbers were much lower than now, regardless if you are measuring number of cases or percent of tests positive or number of deaths or whatever - all measurements are much worse now as compared to March and April. 

And back in April I didn't know a single person who had the virus. Now I can name 3 people that I know well in my personal life that have it.

Yet some people still don't accept the fact that it is a bad situation. I don't get it. 

Yes, you are right. The same is true of all sorts of things. IMHO, it is very important that people have an appropriate amount of respect for the technical experts who do understand things that most don't. There has been an alarming trend recently of dangerous and poorly founded mistrust of expertise (replacing it often with conspiracy theories).

Anyhow, keep safe. I am sure you will do what is sensible and I hope so do your neighbours.

I think the people of Alabama are buying into the idea of wearing masks. and even though it sounds like a joke, the fact is that the people of Alabama love college football. And if things don't change there may not be a college football season this year. Now THAT will get the people to listen - well I hope it will.

Many people in Alabama just won't get excited about a high number of infections as long as 80 to 90 percent of those infected are not seriously ill. 

Many people around here don't accept the numbers as being a valid measure of a serious disease.

And a lot of people around here view a lockdown as being very real and very serious and very bad. They won't choose that at all.