2 minutes ago, Alan_A said:

Thank you all for the kind words - I do appreciate them.

I also value debate, even vigorous debate.

I just feel that that's not what's happening here, at least not any longer.  People are working backward from entrenched conclusions and continuing to build strawmen (e.g. science isn't infallible, therefore science is wrong).

Again, it all seems to be going in circles, and I'm not sure what if anything is being accomplished.

I don't want to be one of those people that stages a dramatic exit for effect and nothing more.

I really am out.  I'd like to thank everybody, including people I've disagreed with, for joining in.

I'd be happy to consider continuing in group PMs or in an e-mail thread, but not here.

Thanks again!

I've valued your insights and information, and your adherence to logic.

I also agree that the thread has taken a sharp downturn toward oblique political posturing and away from science; perhaps acceptable as an aside, but unsupportable as the basis for a thread that doesn't rapidly head downhill.

I can't think of anything further useful to be added in such an environment, either.

More than 1 million people around the world have recovered from COVID-19, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.

This is good news but where?

A big sore point with me is logging the total number of cases that have occurred in an area and the deaths but not the recoveries. 

Since this thing started there have been first 18, then 21 and then 22 cases in my area and the 22nd one came on the same day they recorded the first death.  That makes me believe the 22nd case was the dead person.

Just posting the cumulative number of cases that have occurred without also subtracting the deaths and recoveries from that number make things look worse than they are.

How many of the 22 cases in Roswell have recovered?  How many cases are still active?  Certainly not 22.

This makes people like me question the danger in our area.  And by the looks of things others around me.

I had to go Ace Hardware this afternoon (which prompted me to write this).  

The parking lot was almost full.  The store was pretty crowded.  I only saw 2 people wearing masks; an employee and a customer.  

Perhaps we will get stricken with a mini local pandemic ourselves.  But up to now few people believes it.

Healthcare providers are wearing masks and hospitals and clinics are hard to get into without screening.  I had to meet my brother at the cancer clinic earlier tis week.  We had to report to a table at the entrance where we were questioned, our temperatures taken, and then provided masks.  Only 1 family member can accompany a patient into the facility.

Inside all healthcare professionals were wearing masks.  The orderly that took my brothers vitals was wearing a super mask with some kind of disc vales at the corners.  But neither my brother and I could understand what he was saying.  I could tell he was asking a question.  He finally wrote it down.  'Are there any changes in you medications?'  Leon told him no.

I'm not trying to argue with anyone here.  Several of you chide me and tell me I'm wrong.  But I do have to go by my instincts.   I'm a very healthy guy for my age.  I almost never catch colds or get headaches.  My systolic BP is in the 120 range.  I ride my Schwinn stationary bike 20 minutes a day, 5 miles.  According to my cardiologist my heart and lungs are in great shape.

I survived two wars and raised three teenage daughters.  I'll survive this even if I do contract it.

Noel 

47 minutes ago, w6kd said:

All it takes is one infected person to start a new flare-up...and we know that spread by asymptomatic/presymptomatic carriers is not just possible, but happening with certainty.  Any lockdown strict enough and long enough to stop all transmission would result in economic catastrophe far worse than what's already baked into the cake.

"The numbers" are not cast down from the Oracle on high.  They are produced by statistical modelling processes that are well-understood to be incomplete and with inherent flaws.  They are most certainly subject to challenge.

The kind of confidence you describe will only be possible with a vaccine or herd immunity, the latter of which only happens as the result of the disease naturally burning itself out.  If we're really so risk-averse and weak that we are willing to burn the whole economy down rather than stepping up and accepting some risk, then we deserve the completely predictable consequences that come of succumbing to our irrational and overblown fears.  If my choice is either to go to work and accept a 70% chance that I'll eventually get a disease with a 0.2% chance of killing me, or stay home and let my family slip with near certainty into poverty and despair, look for me wearing my work boots and a mask.    If the guy running the register at Safeway can come to work, why shouldn't the lady at the Sherwin Williams paint store be able to take that same level of risk to feed her family?

There comes a point where hiding from a low-level threat at the expense of all else constitutes good old-fashioned yellow-bellied cowardice in the face of the enemy.

Yes, in a perfect manly world, we would all just put on a boot and mask and go to work. I’ve been sitting on reserve call this whole time, so there’s been no change for me from before, except the phone has been completely silent since essentially all flights have been cancelled. I would put the boots and mask on and go to work when called. However, the world is not made up entirely of manly men like you and I. As you probably are already used to from a life in aviation, the lowest denominator sets the standard. We may be fine with this. But is the average man, woman, child, grandma, teacher, insurance guy going to be as brave as us pilots? Would you order your spouse or your child out there to get back to work now? With the infections and deaths still growing, the level of risk is still high. I’m not so presumptive of people that I expect them to take any level of health risk for the sake of any economy. You can take a horse to the water all you want but you can’t make it drink from it.  If this country cannot get its act together to stay home enough during this couple of weeks, to make enough testing capability, to make enough masks for everyone and for everyone to cooperate in wearing them, then the economy is going to collapse. And it is what it is. If we want to come out of this alive, this country needs to get its act together and get with the program to stop the disease.

Your point about testing is hollow. If this country can build stealth F-35s and nuclear powered Ford class carriers, it can make enough ‘reagents’ in little brown bottles to test everyone that needs or wants a covid test. No excuse. Unless we get this act together, reopening is a fool’s endeavor.

South Korea and Taiwan are also free societies. If asians can test and trace, why can’t Americans? No excuses. Unless we ramp up our test and trace to a level sufficient for whatever level of infection we reopen at, reopening is a fool’s endeavor.

This country needs a hard lockdown while it ramps up testing and tracing capability and produces enough ppe for everyone before it should reopen at an infection level that the test/trace/quarantine capability can handle. What we are doing now is just muddling through in a half assed manner. The economy is in shambles with not much in return by way of stopping this disease. And then to just give up and reopen will bring on the final nail in our coffin.

3 hours ago, Alan_A said:

Thank you all for the kind words - I do appreciate them.

I also value debate, even vigorous debate.

I just feel that that's not what's happening here, at least not any longer.  People are working backward from entrenched conclusions and continuing to build strawmen (e.g. science isn't infallible, therefore science is wrong).

Again, it all seems to be going in circles, and I'm not sure what if anything is being accomplished.

I don't want to be one of those people that stages a dramatic exit for effect and nothing more.

I really am out.  I'd like to thank everybody, including people I've disagreed with, for joining in.

I'd be happy to consider continuing in group PMs or in an e-mail thread, but not here.

Thanks again!

I hope you'll reconsider Alan. You're one of the more savvy posters here and your contributions have been invaluable to me and, I'm sure, many others. So, please, stay with us. We need your sane and rational views.....Doug

Edited May 1, 20206 yr by W2DR
kant spel

5 hours ago, honanhal said:

Alan and others have treated people with whom they disagree with respect, and have characterized their arguments fairly and in good faith.

This ^ especially when I mentioned something to do with the criminal elements who are found in supermax facilities and other penal establishments. Thank you sirs. 

Well here is a note of optimism, The US military have a new blood test  that is claimed to be able to detect the virus much earlier than swab tests.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/01/us-germ-warfare-lab-creates-test-for-pre-infectious-covid-19-carriers

that could boost track and trace and could perhaps offer a way to normality via mass population testing.

Regarding lockdown - please don't raise it too early. Boris has only just gone back to work, I'm on furlough and loving not having to go to work. I guess I don't love my job like people think I do.. on minimum wage - or 80% thereof.. 

 

EDIT - Steve. Nice find! Mind you, one would hope that a germ warfare specialist lab should get a handle on this kind of thing rather quickly! 

Edited May 1, 20206 yr by HighBypass

An interesting article which covers the lines of thought on display in this thread.

Which epidemiologist do you believe?

Quote

Somewhere in between these two opposing instincts lies a wise way forward; a path has to be found between not just different assessments of the facts but different world views.

https://unherd.com/2020/04/which-epidemiologist-do-you-believe/

Un.. Herd.. I like the site name.  

A bloody good article there. thanks.

1 hour ago, F737NG said:

Which epidemiologist do you believe?
https://unherd.com/2020/04/which-epidemiologist-do-you-believe/

Interesting title.

It somehow implies one is entitled to "believe" one or other viewpoint represents Truth.
i am reminded of the parable when a learner Angel broke the Heavenly Mirror of Truth and the shards rained down upon the Earth. All over the world people ran about bearing various sized fragments shouting "We have found Truth!"

I subscribed to unherd, thanks for the link.

Edited May 1, 20206 yr by WingZ

6 hours ago, KevinAu said:

Yes, in a perfect manly world, we would all just put on a boot and mask and go to work. I’ve been sitting on reserve call this whole time, so there’s been no change for me from before, except the phone has been completely silent since essentially all flights have been cancelled. I would put the boots and mask on and go to work when called. However, the world is not made up entirely of manly men like you and I. As you probably are already used to from a life in aviation, the lowest denominator sets the standard. We may be fine with this. But is the average man, woman, child, grandma, teacher, insurance guy going to be as brave as us pilots? Would you order your spouse or your child out there to get back to work now? With the infections and deaths still growing, the level of risk is still high. I’m not so presumptive of people that I expect them to take any level of health risk for the sake of any economy. You can take a horse to the water all you want but you can’t make it drink from it.  If this country cannot get its act together to stay home enough during this couple of weeks, to make enough testing capability, to make enough masks for everyone and for everyone to cooperate in wearing them, then the economy is going to collapse. And it is what it is. If we want to come out of this alive, this country needs to get its act together and get with the program to stop the disease.

Your point about testing is hollow. If this country can build stealth F-35s and nuclear powered Ford class carriers, it can make enough ‘reagents’ in little brown bottles to test everyone that needs or wants a covid test. No excuse. Unless we get this act together, reopening is a fool’s endeavor.

South Korea and Taiwan are also free societies. If asians can test and trace, why can’t Americans? No excuses. Unless we ramp up our test and trace to a level sufficient for whatever level of infection we reopen at, reopening is a fool’s endeavor.

This country needs a hard lockdown while it ramps up testing and tracing capability and produces enough ppe for everyone before it should reopen at an infection level that the test/trace/quarantine capability can handle. What we are doing now is just muddling through in a half assed manner. The economy is in shambles with not much in return by way of stopping this disease. And then to just give up and reopen will bring on the final nail in our coffin.

If only the select few that serve in the military, as cops and firefighters, as docs and nurses, etc bear any expectations to show even a modicum of bravery, then we are lost as a society anyway.  If the weak and feckless really outnumber the brave and selfless in such great numbers, then we deserve to have, as USMC Lt Gen Chesty Puller once put it: "some foreign soldiery [to] invade us and take our women and breed a hardier race"  I think there are plenty of men and women willing to accept some risk to provide for their families...and in the process for the common good as well.  My kids and their families are out there right now doing exactly that.

You speak of producing real material goods like the proverbial fictional unicorn pooping rainbow skittles on demand...if someone just thinks it, it will rain down from the heavens above.  Baloney.  It takes 10-20 years of work from the time a carrier or new aircraft makes its way from an idea to a real thing.  Imagining is easy.  Logistics is hard.  Especially when we've allowed our domestic producers of critical products and/or their precursors to be forsaken in favor of cheap offshore labor.

South Korea and Taiwan were better prepared than the US and Europe due to a couple of big factors...first, they already went through this with SARS and had infrastructure in place and experience from that, and second, the sheer numbers are much smaller.

This country needs a hard lockdown like we need another 9/11 terrorist attack.

It's been a long time since I heard Chesty's name associated with anything Bob.  My kids and grandkid and their families are doing exactly that also in the face of 'the sky will fall if we open too early' crowd.

Which brings me to another one of Chesty's quotes during the pullout from Chosen Reservoir in Korea.  When asked if he were retreating he said, "We're not retreating, we're advancing in the other direction."  That's what opening up some of the economy is doing right now, advancing in the other direction.

Noel

Well, I guess I am that guy after all, because I seem to be back.  I say that with chagrin, because it's really not how I meant it to come out.  And as I said before, I really have no patience with people who stage dramas and then don't follow through. Which, yes, is exactly what I've just done.

There's a reason, however.  Today, coincidentally - or maybe it's one of those meaningful coincidences - I received an e-mail newsletter that I subscribe to.  It's from Scott Galloway, a professor at NYU Stern School of Business and a serial entrepreneur.  A friend and colleague introduced me to him just recently.  He's a very interesting writer - quite an iconoclast and an original thinker, and he builds strong arguments.  This is what he sent today (he also posts to his website, so that's what I've linked to).  It meanders a bit but it's worth sticking with because it comes out in a strong place.  What he's writing about is, first, how to find opportunity in variance (he explains what that means), and then how to apply that to our current coronavirus reality.  The whole essay is worth reading but here's the part that struck me:
 

Quote

 

The Profound Opportunity

The cardinal opportunity in this pandemic is the chance to repair and strengthen relationships. The majority of medals and recognition bestowed on our women and men in uniform is a function of one thing: grace under fire. Your character, and the perception of your character, is a sum of all your actions across your entire life. But the sketch of these actions is traced over with the indelible ink of the grace, or lack thereof, that you demonstrate in times of crisis.

The chart below is a decent framework for helping yourself and others. Isolation fosters introspection. If the growth zone is too far off right now, or if you’re struggling with mental health or addiction issues, then just getting through the day is good enough during a pandemic. You’re a loving person and a responsible citizen? That’s mostly what’s asked of you. You might find, however, that taking a moment to think big picture, or how you could help others, can elevate you above the fear zone. Generosity produces more endorphins in the brain than self-interested behavior.

Take pause, arrest time, and ask yourself:

• Do you have the relationship with your parents you want?
• Is your relationship with your siblings where you would hope it is if you had to say goodbye right now?
• Could you better embrace the camaraderie and joy of friendships diminished due to perceived slights or a lack of effort to stay in touch?

I’m still too insecure, self-conscious, and clinging to a bullsh*t cartoon of masculinity (quiet = strength) to express the admiration, affection, and love I feel for family and friends. Working on it.

It’s all going so fast. It was a blink of an eye when I looked up at the commencement crowd at Berkeley’s Greek theater and saw my mom waving at me. I got a job, got married, and was just starting to be the caregiver she was to me. And then, in a blink, she was gone.

That was 25 years ago. In another blink, I’ll be near the end. One of my fears is that time continues to accelerate, and I’ll have let my own insecurities and bullsh*t get in the way. That they will diminish the opportunities to achieve the only thing that matters: deep, meaningful relationships … and it will be too late.

The pandemic has created variance and a meaningful chance to lap the competition. And it’s given us a profound, maybe once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be the man or woman our kids think we are, and our parents hoped we’d be.

There are so few absolutes. One is that no one, near the end, wishes they had been less forgiving, less generous, or less loving during times of crisis. Time has slowed, for the moment, and we are given the opportunity to repair and strengthen in weeks what can take decades.

 

The reason it struck me should be clear.  Having just stormed out of the forum, of course this brought me up short.  I'm definitely too far to the left of that diagram. And I hope to move farther right.  So what I'd like to do is try to come back and do better at maintaining relationships, both here and elsewhere.  I'm not saying I'm going to be good at it, or that there won't be further blowups, or that I'm going to succeed in sticking around.  But I mean to try.  Connections matter.

I'd also hold Galloway's definition of bravery out as a contrast to some of what's just been posted here, in particular the notion that people who favor public health measures, myself included, are...

4 hours ago, w6kd said:

the weak and feckless [who] really outnumber the brave and selfless

And that the answer is...

4 hours ago, w6kd said:

As USMC Lt Gen Chesty Puller once put it: "some foreign soldiery [to] invade us and take our women and breed a hardier race"

I could respond to that in all kinds of ways.  Taking Galloway's advice, I'm going to take a deep breath and simply observe that there are many forum members who seem to support a cautious approach to public health, and who I guess therefore qualify as weak and feckless.  And that coming from the forum administrator, the statement represents an interesting approach to membership recruitment and retention. I'm not sure that those effects are quite as intended.

Beyond that - I apologize to anyone I've offended in the course of our recent conversations. I'm going to take one more stab at this and hope to do better.

I can't believe that we would consider giving up our freedoms and liberty wholesale, to sit idly bye and watch while the economy burns to the ground, and force millions to descend into a life of privation and poverty, all to hide from a disease with a better than 99% survival rate. 

A "cautious approach" is a huge risk when, metaphorically, winter is approaching and the crops are on fire.  Do we fight the fire knowing that a few of us will get burned in the process, or do we huddle in fear while it burns and then allow ourselves to contemplate, in leisurely miserable safety, what could have been done while we starve in the snow a few months later?  I'm just not wired to understand the kind of guy that would hide under the barn and watch while the fields burn.

3 minutes ago, w6kd said:

I just can't believe that we would consider giving up our freedoms and liberty wholesale, to sit idly bye and watch while the economy burns to the ground, and force millions to enter a life of privation and poverty, all over a disease with a better than 99% survival rate. 

A "cautious approach" is a huge risk when, metaphorically, winter is approaching and the crops are on fire.  Do we fight the fire knowing that a few of us will get burned in the process, or do we huddle in fear while it burns and then allow ourselves to contemplate, in leisurely miserable safety, what could have been done while we starve in the snow a few months later?  I'm just not wired to understand the kind of guy that would hide under the barn and watch while the fields burn.

Wow.

Now that there is a lot of overwrought hyperbole and negative characterization of anyone thinking differently than oneself.

It will be interesting to see what happens should somebody respond in kind.