Coronavirus

[Anon1787]

Does anyone have any insights into what China's leadership is doing? Surely they realize that, even if the Shanghai lockdown succeeds in bringing cases down to zero, in some weeks or months there'd be cases again, and even if they again succeeded in bringing cases down to zero with lockdowns, it's be the same thing again and again.
I guess part of it is saving face - doing a U-turn would be implicitly admitting their Covid policy is not, in fact, the best in the world, and there's the issue of their crappy vaccines.  But the financial, social and psychological costs are surely vast - and a regime that's long boasted its economic successes has literally brought hunger back to Shanghai. They're making seemingly zero effort to not traumatize children, meaning China will bear the consequences for many decades to come. Plus, the lockdown isn't even working, the omicron wave seems to be spreading to Beijing - yet the regime seems to be doubling down.

It's about saving face just like Putin can't afford to lose in Ukraine. There would be a loss of face if there were a major Covid outbreak in Beijing in the fall when Pooh Bear will seek to extend his reign beyond the customary 2 terms during the party congress.

[Stockmann]

I guess, but what baffles me is that both have alternatives. Totalitarian China could enact forced vaccinations (and get the adult vaccination rate past 99%) and could deploy mRNA vaccines while continuing masking and contact tracing, Putin could declare victory and withdraw (like the US did in Vietnam). Instead, Russia is effectively decimating its own military, and China is busy pursuing a policy that not just damages its own economy, but ensures that the damage will last. I don't want Ukrainians to suffer, nor even the average Chinese, but the one upside of this is that I'm more hopeful of my toddler living in a world where democracy is still a thing than I've been in a long time, with the world's two leading autocracies busy shooting themselves in the foot.

[downer]

I was just looking on a libertarian/right wing web site, which had an article on COVID policy.

I'm struck by how many of the people see COVID policy as an attempt to smuggle socialism into the US and undermine fundamental freedoms. They also have a fundamentally different take on the science than the "mainstream."

It's not surprising to me that there are people with such views, but rather how they exist in an almost parallel universe from the mainstream. Seems like the anger about lockdowns, forced vaccinations and mandated masks is not dying down.

[mamselle]

Grumpy folks holed up in silos just get grumpier, they don't look for the exit.

M.

[dismalist]

I was just looking on a libertarian/right wing web site, which had an article on COVID policy.

I'm struck by how many of the people see COVID policy as an attempt to smuggle socialism into the US and undermine fundamental freedoms. They also have a fundamentally different take on the science than the "mainstream."

It's not surprising to me that there are people with such views, but rather how they exist in an almost parallel universe from the mainstream. Seems like the anger about lockdowns, forced vaccinations and mandated masks is not dying down.

Would you provide a link?

Thank you.

[downer]

I'm not enthusiastic about promoting the site. But you will find a link in this message if you look carefully. The comments section is, as ever, revealing.

[Anon1787]

I guess, but what baffles me is that both have alternatives. Totalitarian China could enact forced vaccinations (and get the adult vaccination rate past 99%) and could deploy mRNA vaccines while continuing masking and contact tracing, Putin could declare victory and withdraw (like the US did in Vietnam). Instead, Russia is effectively decimating its own military, and China is busy pursuing a policy that not just damages its own economy, but ensures that the damage will last. I don't want Ukrainians to suffer, nor even the average Chinese, but the one upside of this is that I'm more hopeful of my toddler living in a world where democracy is still a thing than I've been in a long time, with the world's two leading autocracies busy shooting themselves in the foot.

Putin won't be satisfied with merely (falsely) declaring victory and suffer the humiliation of Vietnam like the U.S. or Afghanistan like the U.S.S.R. Likewise, effective vaccination would require using Western vaccines, which are not very effective at reducing the spread of Omicron, and relying primarily on vaccination would be seen as following a Western "let it rip" approach that is framed as being a failure as compared to Chinese exceptionalism. In short, your priors are not obviously more reasonable.

[downer]

I was reading this piece in Fortune.
https://fortune.com/2022/05/22/us-in-sixth-covid-wave-cdc-map-confusing-community-transmission-levels-risk/

It seems clear now that COVID is endemic. Maybe half of Americans have had it. People can and do keep on getting it time after time -- possibly with increasing health effects. Maybe there will be new vaccines soon that protect specifically against the omicron variant, but that's not clear. Right now, at least 100,000 people are getting COVID every day, and maybe more like 500,000. With omicron, most people are out of commission for a few days and are testing negative after a week. Not many will be bothering to see a doctor.

There's clearly no popular support for mandatory measures. I don't even know if students enrolling this fall at places where I teach will be required to vaccinate.

But some people are still playing it very safe, continue with masking and social distancing. Some are still not getting on planes.

I guess the coming academic year will be still be about adjusting to the pandemic, with the realizations that these adjustments are no longer temporary. This is how it will be for the forseeable future, probably for remainder of our teaching careers.

For me, going to conferences remains a big issue. It's expensive and involves more risk than staying at home. It makes it pretty hard to justify.

[marshwiggle]

I was reading this piece in Fortune.
https://fortune.com/2022/05/22/us-in-sixth-covid-wave-cdc-map-confusing-community-transmission-levels-risk/

It seems clear now that COVID is endemic. Maybe half of Americans have had it. People can and do keep on getting it time after time -- possibly with increasing health effects. Maybe there will be new vaccines soon that protect specifically against the omicron variant, but that's not clear. Right now, at least 100,000 people are getting COVID every day, and maybe more like 500,000. With omicron, most people are out of commission for a few days and are testing negative after a week. Not many will be bothering to see a doctor.

There's clearly no popular support for mandatory measures. I don't even know if students enrolling this fall at places where I teach will be required to vaccinate.

But some people are still playing it very safe, continue with masking and social distancing. Some are still not getting on planes.

I guess the coming academic year will be still be about adjusting to the pandemic, with the realizations that these adjustments are no longer temporary. This is how it will be for the forseeable future, probably for remainder of our teaching careers.

For me, going to conferences remains a big issue. It's expensive and involves more risk than staying at home. It makes it pretty hard to justify.

I think a lot of at least optional virtual attendance at meetings, conferences, etc. is going to be the norm in the future. Requiring in-person attendance has a lot of downsides even without covid issues. I don't think that genie can be stuffed back in the bottle.

[apl68]

Last week our church's Vacation Bible School (That's a multi-day church day-camp activity, for those who might not be familiar with the term) inadvertently became a super-spreader event.  It had to be shut down midway through.  Lots of families ended up having to isolate.  Fortunately there were no severe cases.  Sunday we cancelled Sunday school, but did have in-person worship.  Attendance at the face-to-face service was sparse, so there was plenty of room to distance.  Our Bible study group, whose members had all dodged COVID, was able to meet at my house Sunday evening as scheduled.  Late this week we're hoping to go back and finish the interrupted VBS events.

Really hoping that we don't have a surge in a couple of weeks that does something similar to our library summer day-camp that we have planned.  We have a big group enrolled, and we're making it the centerpiece of this year's return to face-to-face summer programming.

[dismalist]

I was just looking on a libertarian/right wing web site, which had an article on COVID policy.

I'm struck by how many of the people see COVID policy as an attempt to smuggle socialism into the US and undermine fundamental freedoms. They also have a fundamentally different take on the science than the "mainstream."

It's not surprising to me that there are people with such views, but rather how they exist in an almost parallel universe from the mainstream. Seems like the anger about lockdowns, forced vaccinations and mandated masks is not dying down.

Would you provide a link?

Thank you.

I'm not enthusiastic about promoting the site. But you will find a link in this message if you look carefully. The comments section is, as ever, revealing.

Found it! [No, I didn't spend all of the last two months looking, just some of that time. :-)]

Some of the comments on that website understandably lead one's hair to stand on end. But they miss the broader points, too.

Here is a link to the Professor Jay Bhattacharya, M.D. interview, extracted from that website, and linked to its original source https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpnbMIOvbjc  A more reasoned and reasonable presentation about Covid policy one will not find.

Big mistake was shut downs for all instead of just for the vulnerable. The interview is long, so hard to summarize here, but includes discussion of political causes, vax, anti-vax, and beyond. It is well worth listening to.

[By the way, libertarian is not right wing. Me, I'm a left libertarian, e.g. :-)]

[dismalist]

Discussion about Florida and deSantis Covid policy on the Florid thread led me to delve into death rates across States, looking for age adjusted death rates. It is true that Florida's age adjusted death rate is higher than California's, but just. But in looking, I came across this:

https://www.bioinformaticscro.com/blog/why-do-covid-deaths-vary-by-state/

The top-line conclusion is:

Vaccination rate is the single biggest predictor of age-adjusted deaths by state.
COVID deaths do not correlate with state stringency after adjusting for age and obesity rate.

["Stringency" refers to the severity of lockdown policies, for which there is an index.]

It's all quite intuitive, to me at least. Age, co-morbidity and non-vaccination of the aged have been the killers, not lack of lockdown.

A fun conclusion is:

Our analysis shows a very strong negative correlation between vaccination status and percent Trump vote.  Additionally, although there was a strong correlation between obesity and Trump vote, in a multivariate linear model with obesity, and vaccination over 65, percent Trump vote was not significantly associated with age-adjusted COVID deaths (P=0.76).

[secundem_artem]

Discussion about Florida and deSantis Covid policy on the Florid thread led me to delve into death rates across States, looking for age adjusted death rates. It is true that Florida's age adjusted death rate is higher than California's, but just. But in looking, I came across this:

https://www.bioinformaticscro.com/blog/why-do-covid-deaths-vary-by-state/

The top-line conclusion is:

Vaccination rate is the single biggest predictor of age-adjusted deaths by state.
COVID deaths do not correlate with state stringency after adjusting for age and obesity rate.

["Stringency" refers to the severity of lockdown policies, for which there is an index.]

It's all quite intuitive, to me at least. Age, co-morbidity and non-vaccination of the aged have been the killers, not lack of lockdown.

A fun conclusion is:

Our analysis shows a very strong negative correlation between vaccination status and percent Trump vote.  Additionally, although there was a strong correlation between obesity and Trump vote, in a multivariate linear model with obesity, and vaccination over 65, percent Trump vote was not significantly associated with age-adjusted COVID deaths (P=0.76).

I'm not an economist (unlike the Dismal one here) but I dabble.  I've seen similar studies that show excess death in Republican districts.  And the gap got wider AFTER vaccines were available.

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w30512/w30512.pdf

From the abstract:

We estimate substantially higher excess death rates for registered Republicans when compared to registered Democrats, with almost all of the difference concentrated in the period after vaccines were widely available in our study states. Overall, the excess death rate for Republicans was 5.4 percentage points (pp), or 76%, higher than the excess death rate for Democrats. Post- vaccines, the excess death rate gap between Republicans and Democrats widened from 1.6 pp (22% of the Democrat excess death rate) to 10.4 pp (153% of the Democrat excess death rate). The gap in excess death rates between Republicans and Democrats is concentrated in counties with low vaccination rates and only materializes after vaccines became widely available.

In other words, Red = Dead and Blue = Yahoo!  Dying for your country is one thing.  Dying for your political party is an entirely different (and incredibly stoopid) animal.  OK, I've overstate the results, but you get the point.

[dismalist]

It doesn't look like there's a contradiction. The nber paper does not attempt to control for obesity [which I take to be correlated with other comorbidities] nor for lockdown severity. Descriptively, the nber paper says Republicans go down the tubes on account they don't get vaccinated [in two states]. That is surely correct. The paper I linked to says nothing different [for fifty states]. It just says non obese Trump voters of a given age who got vaccinated die at the same rate as non-obese non-Trump voters of the same age who got vaccinated. :-)

Let's not lose sight of the big picture: Once a vaccine was available, defense against Covid became a private good  -- vax or die -- and one could reasonably not lock down. Before the vaccine, I was with Bhattacharya & Co. -- lock down for the vulnerable only, which, IIRC deSantis did not adhere to-- but after a vaccine the point is largely moot.