The New Normal

[MC2]

I think you are focusing on all the things he still does that he always did. I am focusing on what has changed. If you don't see the difference, not sure what to tell you, you don't see it.

 

[tirolski]

He's still opinionated as fuçk, but who isn't?

"If we have data let’s look at the data. If all we have is opinions let’s go with mine.” , Ole Miss grad James Barksdale.
It’s the 2nd one in here.

A Dozen Things I’ve Learned from Jim Barksdale and “Barksdaleisms”

Since the contributions of business executives with great operations skills are too often underappreciated I decided to do a blog post on a notable example. I intend for this post to be a natural f…

25iq.com

 

[Warp daddy]

Not trying to bust your chops at all , So what DO u see Harv ? Help us to see pass the obvious

 

[Andy_ROC]

That’s totally fair as well. I’m ok wearing a mask if it’s required by a business or it puts others at ease, for now. At some point though we have to draw a line. It’s extremely easy to get carried away in all of this, especially if safety cops go unchecked and people want public mask wearing to stay as the new normal.

As far as American health care goes, I’m insured now but before I was I didn’t expect shit. It was basically the bare bones of care and a see ya later, here’s a 1200 dollar bill for that x Ray and ace bandage. Heal up buddy. I’m 46 and I didn’t have insurance until two years ago.

You must have very expensive health insurance with such high expectations. Most Americans don’t have that luxury.

For acute care and trauma it really doesn't have anything to do with insurance. If you or a family member shows up at the ER with heaven forbid a severe and potentially life threatening injury, they aren't asking for insurance before they treat you (yeah it could really suck later). However if they are all jammed up with illness that certainly could put you in jeopardy of getting care.

 

[MarzNC]

I don't think he's wrong. I don't know that he's right either. I thought January 2022 would be a lot different than January 2021.

The pandemic situation is very different than a year ago. Heck, it's very different than six months ago. Or even two months ago before Omicron started spreading. Although depending on where you live and how you travel, it may not be that obvious on a day-to-day basis.

Here is an example from my neighborhood. The area has gone from farmland to suburbia in the last 10 years. There are lots of families with young kids in school, people are highly educated with post-college degrees, and most people probably got vaccinated as soon as they were eligible. The recent shift in mask usage was noticeable at the fitness center after Omicron was all over the headlines. Just as there was a shift when the county stopped requiring masks several months ago after the Delta wave was over. When the place re-opened (can't even remember when), everyone was masked. When it wasn't required, about half the people didn't mask at the start. I didn't mask but I only go when it's pretty empty midweek. After a while, only 10% of the adults masked and usually they were with young kids. Now it's back to about half being masked.

Pandemics last a long time . . . years not months. But before everyone had a smart phone, once the situation was over in a given country there weren't local or national headlines about the ongoing pandemic on another continent.

MERS is a coronavirus that was considered a pandemic because it showed up on multiple continents. But few people in N. America heard much about it in 2012-19. It was news to me in early 2020. The big difference from SARS-CoV-2 is that human-to-human transmission is rare for MERS. MERS is fatal for a third of the people who get it. People with MERS aren't contagious without symptoms, so are much less likely to spread it unknowingly to other people. Without research related to SARS and MERS, the development of the vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 would've taken longer.

 

[MarzNC]

At this point, I'm not even looking at detected case numbers. There are so many undetected cases with Omicron, not really much point. Hospitalization stats are decent for most states, with a few exceptions. I only look at the NY Times or CovidActNow because it's easier and they use consistent data sources. With CovidActNow I can choose which states to compare. Also can easily see All Time, 180 days, or 60 days. With Omicron, looking at 60 days it's pretty easy to get a sense of the regional differences. I don't look at large states like NY, FL, TX, or CA very much because there is too much variation within the state. Large populations mask what's really going on. Just as considering the vax rate for all 330 million Americans doesn't really mean much when the range by county is probably from 30% to almost 90%.

New England is a mix. CT and MA seem to be somewhat different than VT, NH, ME. Probably because CT and MA have more large urban areas. VT, NH, ME look like there was a Delta surge after Thanksgiving, followed by a more recent Omicron surge.

Looking at only the past 60 days, pretty clear that the southeast and Rocky Mountains haven't reached an Omicron peak yet. Note that during the winter of 2019-20, Colorado was one of the first states to have imported cases of COVID-19. I read about more than one international traveler who did ski vacations there in Feb 2020. They tested positive soon after leaving the USA.

 

[snoloco]

I think you’re mistaking “seeing the other side” for “whining about the side he doesn’t like, creating strawmen, and not even reading the links he posts”:

You think I didn't read the article? I did, it's just that I know how to read between the lines. "When it is safe" means indefinitely if the last 22 months were any indication.

 

[MC2]

You think I didn't read the article? I did, it's just that I know how to read between the lines. "When it is safe" means indefinitely if the last 22 months were any indication.

So, you just switch to pure speculation & call it “reading between the lines”?

Okay, if that’s how we’re doing things, I read between the lines of the article, too, and it said snoloco should stop whining because he sounds like a baby.

 

[MarzNC]

Here's a couple ways to see regional differences. First is the standard graph from The NY Times. Second uses one state from each of four regions for a direct comparison. Similar sequence in terms of when each region peaks for a given wave as has happened since early 2020. Population density, international airports, and other "cultural" factors stay the same as the dominant variant changes.

 

[snoloco]

So, you just switch to pure speculation & call it “reading between the lines”?

You can call it speculation but that's what's happening. In Oregon, emergency orders need to be revisited every 6 months. 6 months from now is late July. Why would they be trying to legislate mask mandates if they were going to end before then?