Hey, there! Log in / Register
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
3 questions and 2 comments for Charlie
1) Has everyone who needs to be tested been tested?
2) What are the results?
3) Are you just going to wait until it gets worse before ordering shelter in place?
Oh and also Channel 7 reports your alleged "sanitize the T" program is a fraud.
https://whdh.com/news/7investigates-mbtas-new-cleaning-protocols-not-bei...
Your reduction of T trips to "prevent the spread of the coronavirus" is a fraud too. Reducing trips because ridership is down makes some sense. But it's not preventing the spread of covid-19. There are numerous reports of more crowding, especially on the Blue and Red Line.
Get with the program
The sooner we do this the better. Stay home. Stay away. Namaste.
reminder
There were no plans for closing all schools either, until there were.
It's like the debit card
It's like the debit card terminal at the checkout line at the store:
do not remove card... please leave card inserted... do not remove card... please lea(blaring klaxon) NOW NOW NOW! PULL OUT NOW! FOR GOD's SAKE, NOW!
Try this instead
At Pet Supplies Plus, when it is time to remove your card from the reader a dog barks. Pretty funny.
It's annoying but for a good reason
People were used to just swiping their card and putting it back in their wallet. Now folks will often start doing something else (like bagging) while waiting for the transaction to finish, and a pretty significant subset of those people will just forget their card if it's still stuck in the reader.
What about Mayor Walsh?
Could Mayor Walsh issue a shelter in place
order for Boston?
Which means ...
expect it within two days.
Yep, just read the Italy time line
That's where we're heading 100%.
South Korea, Singapore locked that shit down and flattened the curve. We simply will not here. Red states especially are going to lose so, so many old and unhealthy people.
This is insane. I know 3 very
This is insane. I know 3 very sick people right now with low fevers and they are told that they can’t get tested. Coughing, body aches and low fever.wtf
yup
Sorry its inevitable..
People really aren't staying home. People are like "I gotta work" (i.e. whats left of retail and service workers)
Without a Shelter in Place, businesses will still open, and require workers to come in. We saw it after the marathon, and how well it kept (most) people off the streets.
I hate to say it.. but we really need it. We gotta have people stay put for *at least* 2 weeks to see where the chips fall. But ideally 6-8 weeks for it to take its full course.
We need to pay attention to Italy because this is where we are going but on FAR LARGER SCALE. We're a larger country with more people, whose administration did a piss poor job at managing it.
The shelter-in-place after
The shelter-in-place after the marathon was one day in duration, three or four days after the bombing, in what was (among other things) an active-shooter situation.
...and yes, we'll need people to isolate a lot longer than one day.
I'll repeat a question I've raised in conversations with other people. What will it take?
Human behavior being what it is.... circumstances (financial pressures) being what they are...
They'll go along with it for a few days, a week, maybe a second week...
What will it take to convince people to go all-in on this?
It's a sick calculus, but from a certain perspective the worst thing would be a slow, not-severe start to the disease curve (or even a slight plateau or drop in new cases for a day).
People will convince themselves
- that it's not that serious,
- that the gov't and experts overreacted,
- that it's a manageable risk, that it's over,
- that they protected themselves and can now move on with their lives,
- that they gotta get back to work,
- that they need to socialize,
etc...
and THEN it will spike!
What will it take?
How many inpatient cases, crowded hospitals, deaths... will be enough to convince people that it's real, it's now, and they must continue to do this?
Short of repeated stories of people dying in their homes because there's not enough hospital beds (or nobody to bring them to the hospital), or dead people at home with nobody to remove them (see Italy)...?
What is "enough" horror to convince people?
What it will take is Ivanka getting sick
Then the lock down order will come through in about 60 seconds and the National Guard will be called out to enforce it.
Give it a fucking rest.
Give it a fucking rest.
If people can't work, they'll starve
Surely there is a way to keep people from propagating the virus short of locking them in their homes for months.
Devil's advocate
I'm going to play devil's advocate here.
We currently have 218 cases of COVID-19 in the state; however, we're a population of nearly 7 million people. Half of those cases were from the Biogen conference, and from what I understand, about 20 or so people were hospitalized statewide. Most likely, those Biogen attendees are recovering or have recovered and have self-isolated.
If we locked down to "flatten the curve" and we hermetically sealed ourselves for a long amount of time, the potential to reduce the disease may be excellent, but is not going to go away. The public may have a false sense of security - if they're convinced they're out of danger once everything is lifted, everything will be fine.
Then the disease really hits hard via the rebound effect. People who were in their houses for weeks infect hundreds of thousands of people, and that "flattened curve" spikes exponentially. In that case, the lockdown only bought us time before it really slammed us.
Furthermore, if you try oppress people in the name of saving others, resentment, fear, and anger builds. You can only do so much until you mentally break down and start lashing out at others. Even after the lockdown is over, the shell-shock (or PTSD) of the past few months remains for a long, long time.
Perhaps that's why Governor Baker is adamant in not locking down the state. With voluntary self isolation, increased hygiene, reduction of public gatherings, emphasis on keeping our distance from others, and the recovery of COVID-19 patients, our curve (right now) is flat enough that it doesn't warrant imprisoning everyone in their homes, and a lockdown order should only be the very last resort (especially if those cases exponentially spike and hospitals are overwhelmed).
In other words, locking down the entire state would do more harm than good at this stage of the game. Just like when he closed the schools and the restaurants, only when Governor Baker is convinced that lockdown is necessary, he will implement it, and not a second before. No amount of hectoring will convince him otherwise.
Buying time is the whole
Buying time is the whole point, not just an afterthought. We need more time for testing to really ramp up. We need more time for our hospitals to stock up on PPE to protect the frontline workers. We need more time to acquire/produce more ventilators to save the lives we can. We need more time to develop effective protocols to treat this. We need more time to get the vaccine development moving along. We need more time because we are so unprepared for what’s coming.
218 CONFIRMED
>We currently have 218 cases of COVID-19 in the state
These are confirmed. If we tested widely, you would find many, many more than that. But, clearly, you are going to have to see it to believe it. Won't be long.
The virus has probably already spread far and wide
Locking people in their homes at this point amounts to slamming the barn door shut after the horse has escaped, it seems to me.
Truly?
If that's true, I may even vote for him next time.