Social Distancing and Unintended Consequences

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: mysterioustranger
a reply to: chr0naut

That's believing their figures. You cant because they lie.

What about all the other countries?

You can pretend it is all lies, but that is denying the overall picture of scientific and medical data from thousands of researchers across the planet.

"You can pretend it is all lies, but that is denying the overall picture of scientific and medical data from thousands of researchers across the planet."-you said

And you're pretending it isn't all lies.

1st Responder

originally posted by: TheRedneck

Another unintended consequence, if one wishes to read the exact text linked above, is that anyone who tests positive for the WuFlu is required to stay at home with no exceptions other than emergency medical care for 14 days. That's right; get a positive on a test, and you are immediately a prisoner in your own home. Out of food? Too damn bad, stay at home! Some kid throws a baseball through a window? Sorry, Charlie, just live with the draft while you're recovering. House burns down? Well, you can either burn with it or you can get a ticket for violating your Shelter in Place Order. Now, under these restrictions, would anyone actually want to get a test? I know I will fight it tooth and nail! I don't think I have the WuFlu, but what if the test gives a false positive or I actually have it asymptomatically? I'm screwed! So there won't be many tests in Alabama, at least not voluntary, and we won't know if the WuFlu is widespread or not.

TheRedneck

You made some good points TheRedneck....

"would anyone actually want to get a test? "

Getting tested might be a bad thing.... can you imagine getting a ankle monitor because you were exposed to the bug?

Ankle monitors ordered for Kentucky residents refusing quarantine after coronavirus exposure.

Despite Governor Andy Beshear ordering all Kentucky residents to stay at home to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, some in Louisville are reportedly refusing to self-quarantine.

As a response, Jefferson Circuit Court judge Angela Bisig is ordering ankle monitors for those who were exposed to the coronavirus but who won’t stay at home.

So yeah.... in Kentucky if your "exposed" to the bug... and "exposed" doesn't mean you have it... is ridiculous.

People will be like.. f-That I'm not getting tested! Who would want to be treated like a criminal?

originally posted by: mysterioustranger

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: mysterioustranger
a reply to: chr0naut

That's believing their figures. You cant because they lie.

What about all the other countries?

You can pretend it is all lies, but that is denying the overall picture of scientific and medical data from thousands of researchers across the planet.

"You can pretend it is all lies, but that is denying the overall picture of scientific and medical data from thousands of researchers across the planet."-you said

And you're pretending it isn't all lies.

1st Responder

As a first responder, how many late-stage illnesses would you ever see?

a reply to: Tarzan the apeman.

What planer did you buy? I am thinking of getting one in the future. I was looking at the Dewalt.

I went the cheap route: a Bauer model from Harbor Freight. I've had good luck with their tools in the past, and it's not like I'm going to be using it to finish thousands of board feet anyway. I have this one stack of lumber from the tree that fell, and I plan on taking another one down for myself; the rest are being logged and sold. It's time to clear out the mature trees so the younger ones can grow, and I finally found someone willing to spot-cut (clear-cutting is simply not going to happen here as long as this old redneck is alive).

A Dewalt would be awesome... I love Dewalt tools... but I just couldn't justify the price. The Bauer was $380 tax and all, and it'll do 12 1/2" wide boards up to 5" thick... more than I need.

It is set up right now so it could be used (it could work as a portable unit), but there again my physical situation comes into play. I don't have the stamina to fight with a portable unit, so I need this thing nice and steady so I can use it. It's going to be tough enough just feeding boards through it; no way I am going to be able to feed boards and steady the machine. A steady table set up next to the barn fixes that problem, and I have enough scrap lumber to make one.

TheRedneck

a reply to: GravitySucks

However, people with good intentions are trying to figure out how to best keep things running as efficiently as possible for as many as possible in these unique and trying times.

Good intentions? Maybe. But the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

You're right that we don't have good guidance yet, but "doing something" is not always... really, rarely is... the best path forward. We know a few things so far that we can use: we know the virus is highly contagious and can transmit asymptomatically. We know that the major outbreaks thus far have been in major population centers and seem to coincide with high-density events. We know the virus is little more than a cold for most, but can become deadly for those at high risk.

Put that together and we have a situation where some control of viral spread is essential, but we also know there is no way to stop the spread. That's not what we are doing; this is all geared to stop the spread of a virus whose spread is a certainty. An impossibility. So, knowing that we cannot stop the spread, our only real hope is to slow the spread, especially to high-risk groups, and work toward treatments and vaccines. Instead of stopping the spread, these policies are actually advancing the possibility of the spread to the vulnerable.

Leaders are not supposed to just be throwing everything out there and hoping something will work. That shotgun approach rarely if ever works outside of small game hunting. Leaders are supposed to be looking at the big picture to try and determine what the unintended consequences of their agendas are; that's why they are there. We don't have leaders looking at the big picture any more, and that, good intentions or not, is going to get people dead that didn't have to be dead.

TheRedneck

a reply to: ketsuko

By the time my symptoms force me there, I may require hospitalization meaning if they do test me, they're getting a sample of the worst part of the illness, not any of the rest.

My wife had a period of time when her blood pressure would spike for seemingly no reason. She would go to the hospital, they couldn't find anything else wrong, so they would load her down with blood pressure medicine and send her home. After a day or two, her blood pressure would go back to normal, but the cost of all that medication was killing us (and making her feel terrible).

It turned out to be the result of a recurring infection.

Your post reminded me of one time when I said something to a doctor about just throwing more medicine at a problem that was only sporadic to start with. He responded that every time he saw her, she had high blood pressure. Of course she did! We didn't go to the ER when she didn't have a problem!

Especially with such severe penalties for testing positive, people are not getting tested en masse, and thus we do not know how many are actually getting the virus, nor can we even get a sure handle on what may be danger signs.

TheRedneck

a reply to: chr0naut



Here try this.

It's long, but it's an interview with a medical doc who also has a PhD in economics about the issues with the data and the current problems with all this.



**EDIT**

I'm going to add this to my post.

The current kings of the disease modeling world have a history of not exactly getting it right while at the same time being treated much like they have been in this current situation -- like court astrologers.

They are a small group circulating between Oxford and Imperial colleges, and they have some personal dramas going on (soap opera type stuff).

That response, involving the slaughter of more than 11 million sheep and cattle at a cost of more than £8bn was based entirely on modelling and remains hugely controversial — with many believing the modellers got it wrong. They were modelling a fast-moving epidemic with little accurate data. A subsequent government inquiry was damning of the general approach and its conclusions may be relevant to the current crisis. It said: “The FMD epidemic in UK in 2001 was the first situation in which models were developed in the ‘heat’ of an epidemic and used to guide control policy . . . analyses of the field data, suggest that the culling policy may not have been necessary to control the epidemic, as was suggested by the models produced within the first month of the epidemic. If so it must be concluded that the models supporting this decision were inherently invalid.”

The Imperial modellers’ next big public challenge came eight years later when swine flu swept the world — fortunately killing few Britons because older people tended to be immune and younger ones were strong enough to fight it off. Britain was, however, left with 34 million doses of unused and expensive vaccines. Again there was an inquiry — which concluded that ministers had once again treated modellers as “astrologers”, asking them to provide detailed forecasts when they had too little data.

“Modelling did not provide early answers,” it concluded. “The major difficulty with producing accurate models was the lack of a relatively accurate idea of the total number of cases . . . This is not to reject the use of models, but to understand their limitations: modellers are not ‘court astrologers’.”

This is where this same set of modelers led the UK on foot and mouth and swine flu. Those were less costly messes because they basically impacted one country. This time they're sending all of the Western world into economic Depression without solid data to base their models.

This ties in to the video above where in the early parts, Dr. Bhattacharya more or less says that they can't come up with an accurate numerator without a solid denomiator -or- you can't figure out a fatality rate without having some idea how many are or have been sick to compare with those who die. You can't figure that out without good samples of testing which we all know isn't happening.

a reply to: CraftyArrow

Agreed. Getting a WuFlu test right now would be like walking into a police station and asking them to check to see if I could be arrested.

Not. Gonna. Happen.

Before this order came out, I would have been OK with a test... hey, be good to know if I already got over the damn bug. But not now, and even after this order expires April 30 (assuming it is not extended), I'm not going to be ready for a test then either, knowing that one stroke of a pen and I can be treated like a criminal.

That Kentucky rule really bothers me... at least Alabama hasn't gone that far yet. They at least require a positive test result (from tests where we know there are quite a few false positives and false negatives).

TheRedneck

a reply to: chr0naut

In my 45+ year career? And 20 in a University Medical Center?

That doesnt even warrant the 3 sentences I bother to reply with...

One unintended consequence is that now I have to go to four stores to find what I formerly could have found at one store. Vons doesn't have eggs or milk, so I go to Sprouts. Now I have my eggs but they are also out of milk, so I go to Walmart. Walmart has milk, toilet paper, and paper towels, but no Clorox wipes. The cashier tells me, "Hey, I heard Target has Clorox wipes!" So that's three additional places I have to go, walking around in germs and potentially touching things, not to mention more times I have to swipe my debit card and more PIN pads to touch, more times I need to worry about transferring germs to my car's door handle and steering wheel, etc. ANd if I need to use a public bathroom during all this, all bets are off.

I am not really upset about these inconveniences; I will be OK. But these are nevertheless unintended consequences of a plan which was supposed to prevent the spread of germs. And SUPER inconvenient, if not impossible, for anyone with any kind of physical impairment.

a reply to: TheRedneck

I keep waiting for the massive manufacturing capability we have on the individual level to be leveraged in this time.. 3D printers, CNC, even made a thread detailing a housing structure that uses all these things (my life's work, up until a couple years ago).

It seems that non-corporate solutions are not a focus, to put it mildly.

Even things like salt masks dont seem to be getting much traction, instead waiting for companies like 3M to get it done.

I think one unintended consequence is that Im seeing folks interact more than ever around here. I think many realized that we rarely get closer than 10-15 feet anyway, usually talking from the street to a porch, or the street to someone working in a garden, etc.

originally posted by: mysterioustranger
a reply to: chr0naut

In my 45+ year career? And 20 in a University Medical Center?

That doesnt even warrant the 3 sentences I bother to reply with...

No way I could have known that.

Apologies.

a reply to: OuttaHere

And SUPER inconvenient, if not impossible, for anyone with any kind of physical impairment.

I am loathe to even post this... but if it can wake one person up to what is happening, maybe the shame will be worth it.

I am a heart patient. I have survived 7 cardiac arrests, one stent, and a quintuple bypass. I have a prescription for nitroglycerin and am on statins for my high cholesterol now (the root cause of the heart issues. I am generally OK, except for one thing: My legs will only work for so long before they literally stop working from exhaustion.

I ordered the parts I needed this morning online and got them through curbside delivery. That went fine. But I had forgotten a few things, and I realized there was no line today; I could go inside. So I did. I got what I needed, and went to check out at the Pro line as normal for me, but it was backed up. OK, self-checkout... nope, roped off for some unknown reason. OK, maybe I can get back to the main checkout; it's not far.

But then, when I tried to exit the store, I was told I had to exit through the garden center.

Now, I know I have limitations. I take them into account on almost everything I do now. Trips to big stores are carefully planned out; I make sure I am well-rested and feel up to it before I even go in. I am constantly calculating whether I should leave now while I can or do I have the "juice" to get something else. That's just my life now, and I don't blame anyone for it.

But I never expected when I walked inside that I would have to traverse not just the entire store 1 1/2 times, but also the entire length of the parking lot. I made it outside, and literally collapsed on the sidewalk.

Yeah... I managed to hit a nearby appliance cart instead of the ground, but I was unable to go any farther. I kept looking at my car, still 3/4 of the lot away and I was unable to even stand, much less get to it. Oh, I got plenty of apologies from employees, and I can't blame them for following company orders, but then telling me they're sorry... at that time it was not what I wanted to hear. There was a familiar tightening in my chest and I was completely helpless.

One of the employees finally realized this was serious and got me in a wheelchair back to my car. I spent a good half hour at least just sitting there, trying to catch my breath and let the pain in my chest ease. Finally, I felt capable of driving home.

Right now, it looks to me like anyone who needs medical attention other than WuFlu treatment is just screwed. Please go die somewhere; we don't have time for you. It is quite true that this virus will kill literally hundreds of thousands of people... but what we aren't being told is that many of those who die will never contact it.

Oh, and for those who poo-poo my experience: you'll be old one day, too. Maybe by then there will be help for you; there certainly isn't any for me. I'm on my own medically; I don't have the virus. So are you.

TheRedneck

a reply to: Serdgiam

I keep waiting for the massive manufacturing capability we have on the individual level to be leveraged in this time.. 3D printers, CNC, even made a thread detailing a housing structure that uses all these things (my life's work, up until a couple years ago).

Well, read my post just above. All of this I went through so I could get 3D printing capability. I already have the design ability and decades of working with 3D models. If we put people who have the ability to help through all that, I don't blame anyone for not wanting to help.

I'll get my printer set up now. But I will not use it to add to the panic. If society wants to kill people, they can do it without my help.

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

Oh, I hear ya.

I think the post you mention is even the one I responded to

I say I "keep waiting," but realistically, I dont think itll happen. Its a massive unrealized potential though, and has been for years.

Id like to see tools like 3D printers become as easy to use as ink printers, as well as multimaterial, but I dont think there are too many that realize the potential of such a thing.

I wasnt even talking about adding to panic, or what have you, I think its something we should have been working towards for years. Its just arguably more relevant right now, and in that, there was the likelihood of more amenable attitudes towards the idea.

There are a lot of talks about returning our manufacturing base, which I have agreed with for quite some time. Im just not nearly as convinced that the best way to go about it is through "ye mass manufacturing of yore."

Same thing with all the stuff Ive worked on.. Always thought it was all very clever, and directly addresses a lot of current issues. But, I think I was right in moving on from it, even if that meant walking away from decades of work. I suppose thats another unintended consequence, eh?

I identify with your health struggles though. Mine are different, but yield roughly the same end result. Enabling folks like us to live as normal of a life as possible was always the primary goal of my work. It just so happened it might have had similar benefits for everyone.

a reply to: Serdgiam

We actually have some pretty advanced 3D capabilities already, but the price is prohibitive. The printer I have is multi-use so far as the plastics it will take, but it's still thermal and limited to low-temp applications. My intent on using it was originally to make mechanical parts for my projects; I was considering trying to help some with the medical needs, though.

But that was before it became so obvious that my medical needs are second to everyone else. Now I'll take care of me. That's what happens when folks decide to ignore others; those others start ignoring back.

(That last part was not aimed at you, but at people in general... didn't come out as clear as I wanted it to.)

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

My folks just realized they can't even curbside.

What they need are groceries and all you can order for that are dry goods. The things they really need -- fresh fruits and veg, milk, meat, etc., you can't order curbside. So they're back to square one.

They're going to try to be there at the crack of dawn during senior hour to see if they can beat a line. Otherwise, their only hope is what they can manage out of the small local grocery.

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: mysterioustranger
a reply to: chr0naut

In my 45+ year career? And 20 in a University Medical Center?

That doesnt even warrant the 3 sentences I bother to reply with...

No way I could have known that.

Apologies.

Its Ok, friend! A bit edgy we all are....take care...

a reply to: TheRedneck

My main take away from the OP is that you, a person with admitted serious heart conditions, decided to go to a potentially busy hardware store when the advice is to stay in your home except for essential reasons. Your reason - to get some stuff to keep you busy. Not exactly essential. You may feel that you are willing to risk your own health, however you becoming unwell puts additional strain on a healthcare system that is already having to deal with extra work due to this virus.

As for the queues outside shops - This has been addressed in other places by marking the floor outside with lines 6' apart for people to stand behind. It's not that hard.

People staying at home for 14 days if diagnosed- Is there no community help, local government assistance, neighbours/family to help, local store delivery services etc? Straw man arguments like 'I'll get charged for going out if my house is burning' helps no one.

The things you cite are not unintentional consequences. They are basic challenges that are easily recognised and solvable. It worries me that these are considered to be surprising.

a reply to: TheRedneck

Why isn't it referred to as unsociable distancing?
This is one for George Carlin RIP.

I could just hear him.

Social distancing isn't very social at all!

What the # is so social about distancing yourself from another human being?

He'd have a field day!