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Massachusetts now has the lowest coronavirus transmission rate in the country, site that tracks such things says
By adamg on Mon, 06/22/2020 - 4:54pm
WBUR reports a site that tracks Covid-19 transmission says Massachusetts has an Rt rate of 0.67, which means that many people who test positive are not spreading the virus - a rate of 1.0 would mean that an infected person has infected just 1 other person. This is a good thing, obviously.
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Wear a mask, friends!
Be good to your neighbors and your community - wear masks! Let’s keep this positive momentum going!
Great news but you drew wrong conclusion
Yes, it is great news!
No, masks had little to do with it!
Massachusetts has had an R value below 1 since April 1, 2020, according to that analysis, plus others that I've seen.
It (probably) means that "requiring" people to wear masks in public (and, in private, actually) did little to change the infection rate.
Once the old people in nursing homes died, it became .. (oh, no) .. a bad flu season.
Or, it means that people in
Or, it means that people in MA took seriously the order to self isolate, and took precautionary measures like wearing face covering BEFORE it was mandated, unlike so many other states, which is now proving to be effective.
But sure, go start swapping spit with strangers again, posthaste, soon as you can find any willing.
Not a conclusion, a recommendation going forward.
Wearing a mask is one of the best tools we have when we can't isolate at home (which is the best approach, however untenable) and will, along with the full suite of precautions, help suppress the growth of new cases. Let's not be FL or AZ!
oh look a realtor turned public health expert
Where'd you get your degree in public health or epidemiology?
Or if you'd rather answer a different question, why specifically do you think various public health experts who did study this and did conclude masks are a good option for slowing the spread of covid are apparently lying (?) about facemasks being effective? Like on a global level? Just to stick it to freedom loving geniuses like you that actually know better?
Adam, where is the down-vote
Adam, where is the down-vote button?
Avoid anyone not wearing or half-wearing a mask like the plague!
If they can't do that one simpleand considerate thing they cannot be trusted with any of the "harder" or more complex things like hand washing and social distancing.
It's like a scarlet letter.
If any of those fools get near me I loudly call them out on their behavior. And I report all employees that are half-assing it.
I won't say anything stronger out of respect for Adam and his site.
Are you serious?
You are saying MA having a an R value below 1 since April 1st is evidence that masks did not help?
Just because tons of people self-isolated, social distanced, closed down tons of businesses, and etc does not means masks did nothing. When you have multiple "variables" affecting the "group", you can't say one variable did nothing and other did something.
Actually if we're gonna look and make non-expert analysis and argue conclusions. Then notice from April 15 - May 9 our Rt rose from .82 to .89 despite we didn't start doing any reopenings until May 18. But after May 9th it started to go down again. What happen a few days before May 9?
Baker announced his Mask Order on May 1st with May 6th as the effective date. Roughly after the 9th it has kept sliding to this very day even though we have partly reopened offices/labs, factories, barber/salons, various retail, outdoor dining, and had several massive mass outdoor gatherings. If you're gonna draw your own conclusions, shouldn't that also register something?
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But you know the funny thing, the real thing that bothers me isn't you arguing masks aren't effective. That raises my eyebrows, but I can read past it as a poor analysis that I'll leave for others to argue. It's your "old people in nursing homes died, it became .. (oh, no) .. a bad flu season." It's the type of arguments used by the "Reopen now" and "I need a haircut" protests. The "lighter" side of that fraction that argues a "it's just a bad flu" versus the "It's all a hoax, #filmyourhospital crowd", but still the arguments of that fraction.
A bad flu season may only kill roughly in the same ballpark as all the deaths Covid has killed once you minus the LTC facilities. But that's because we took steps to intervene. We kept it only infecting ~10% of Boston's population if that antibody test is correct. If we have treat it as a bad flu virus - basically no countermeasures and de facto let it reach herd immunity, even the low end of 60% means 6x the numbers we got in just Boston. And still leaves out that outside Boston will not be 10% but lower so that's more than x6 is a low end. And that's leaves out this thing spreads faster than the flu if left unimpeded, most flu can't spread fast enough to overwhelm hospitals. This virus can, which means the treatments that keep people alive won't be available to everyone. That timeline is not bad flu season numbers.
I'm sure you already know the above on some level. But somehow you're still calling it a bad flu. Implying we took this thing too seriously, that we should have took some kind of course of action less strict than the one we choose. Every less restriction implies a higher Rt than we have right now. Every tick in the Rt would imply more deaths and more infections that did. We don't get better COVID numbers while simultaneously choose less harsh countermeasures.
Oh and basically arguing LTC deaths don't count is still fucked up btw
And this is disheartening to read that from you. I supported you back when you ran for office. Not that pandemic views in 2020 should have bearing in 2016 for Register of Deeds. But my support back then was not just about being in that office either.
Excellent post, Rhoninfire!
Thank you for telling it like it is. Charlie Baker has displayed good sense during this Covid-19 Pandemic, and we should thank him for it.
Yes...
Exactly, and it reminds me of an analogous situation 20 years ago. Remember the Y2K crisis? Computers (especially mainframes, still the backbone of many systems we don't think about, like the ATM networks) were predicted to malfunction big-time because their code couldn't handle the "20" prefix in the massive date shift from the 1990's. Ignorant people afterwards saying the crisis was overblown nonsense because nothing went wrong. They claimed millions of dollars was wasted on it world-wide, it was just a hoax or something.
Of course nothing went wrong because the IT guys (like me) did take it seriously and patched all the code before it could blow up. The moron you're responding to is making a similar argument that masks were baloney because things got better (at least for the moment) in this pandemic.
Understanding cause-and-effect was never a strong point of people with an ideological filter over their eyes, a much bigger issue than a mask over our mouths.
15 days to stop the spread
To keep our medical ICUs from getting overloaded and have dead people stacking up in the hallways.
4 months later...
It's become "we can never go back to our old ways", except if there is an "socially conscious" reason to riot and protest in groups of thousands.
Hard not to be a little cynical.
Cynicism is a choice. Hasn't
Cynicism is a choice. Hasn't it sunk in by now that "15 days" was, at best, an extremely over-optimistic misreading of the unfolding global health crisis? Even at the time, most credible public health people were talking about months, not weeks. "15 days to stop the spread" was a slogan, not a plan.
No, "15 days to stop the
No, "15 days to stop the spread" - if it was even possible at that point - would have required something far closer to an absolute shelter-in-place lockdown.
wrong wrong wrong
Stay at home isolating explains it partly before June, although masks contributed then, but mostly stay at home isolation since everything was closed except for essentials. We've maintained the R rating since then BECAUSE OF THE MASKS. We're getting out more, indoors more with strangers not in our households, taking public transportation more, passing each other on the sidewalks for more than our daily get out of the house walks, going to beaches, etc and kept the R rating low - BECAUSE OF MASKS. A bad flu season doesn't cause your blood vessels split jackass. Stay at home and masks prevented over 60M cases and likely over a 1M if not 2M deaths - stfu with your Trumpian medical "knowledge". And it's not over so wear a damn mask or stay home.
Agreed. Orange makeup works just as well.
Though the butt injection of bleach can be painful, it has a proven track record. In addition, swallowing of Christmas lights is an under appreciated form of prevention due to anti christian sentiment.
I get it
I understand people's anger and frustration over my comments. Mostly, I've kept them to myself but they slip out on occasion.
Only 2 things:
1) As always, I must remind people: I'm not a Realtor(tm) and I don't earn any money at all from real estate, not that that should matter. If you're questioning my motives, it's pure and simple: saying what I think.
2) I hope everyone everywhere will take the time to do some independent research. Not on masks but on COVID, in general. How many of you even took the time to go from here to the WBUR article to the original study to see what they were even talking about?
There are other excellent sources. I'd start with the city & state's daily updates, but there's so much more.
It doesn't take a scientist or epidemiologist or anything like that to understand: all you need is the ability to look at charts to draw your own conclusions. You don't even need to know long division.
Boston Public Health Commission daily updates and weekly status reports, by neighborhood, age and sex
https://www.bphc.org/
Massachusetts Department of Public Health daily updates, statewide plus by county
https://www.mass.gov/info-details/covid-19-response-reporting
NY Times, etc. daily updates, by state and nationwide
https://covidtracking.com/data/us-daily/
CDC tallies of deaths, rates, and positives, by state
https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases
Johns Hopkins analysis 1
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/states-comparison/testing-state-week...
Johns Hopkins analysis 2
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/individual-states/massachusetts
Johns Hopkins analysis 3
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/states-comparison
Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia COVID modeling
https://policylab.chop.edu/covid-lab-mapping-covid-19-your-community
What research did you saw
No, you don't get it because you somehow you look at all those charts and conclude it's a bad flu.
I looked at those charts too. Followed lot of those links, read articles, posts, even papers. I even went through my network of friends and found people who work in hospitals, an PhD student in epidemiology field, and even a friend whose sister even works as a doctor in a NYC hospital (who reported to me things was fucked btw).
If you're hoping that someone will do their own research and find your conclusion, well I didn't. You gonna need to tell me what data you looked at that got your views. You gonna need to tell me numbers I said and data I found was wrong. Currently, the closest data point you said was deaths minus LTC deaths implies a bad flu season. I already pointed out only getting "bad flu season" numbers now because we did all of this. I think it's pretty clear logic would say the timeline that we did none of this would have worse numbers. If that's wrong, explain.
And only after respecting your premise that I said we shouldn't be separating LTC deaths from all deaths anyways.
Else I suggest you go back and re-do your numbers again.
It doesn't take a scientist
Unfortunately, this is absolutely false. Charts are just a way to illustrate relationships between data points visually. You still need to understand what the data points are. You're looking at a chart and you think you're seeing "COVID spread has nothing to do with masks and is just a bad flu" but what you're actually seeing is "this line went up here, and down over there." The ability to reliably turn that simple visual into meaningful, complex information very much does require real knowledge, and this attitude that it doesn't gives false confidence that probably makes it even more likely that you'll draw faulty conclusions.
The proliferation of infographics online, aimed at lay people who don't know what they're looking at, is a real problem. Here's a quick primer: https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty-and-research/anderson-review/stock...
John, I get it
You see that old people die more easily than younger people and you're younger than the more extreme death tolls, so you're like "why can't we just act normal again, people?".
Well, John, less isn't zero. Fewer younger people die...but it's not just age playing a factor. Fewer younger people have the kinds of debilitating illnesses that lead to the cytokine storming and complications that lead to death. Older people tend to accumulate those sorts of problems through a lifetime of injuries and declining health (on top of just old age beating them down). And younger people know and live with older people too. Sure, all the nursing homes passed around the virus until huge swaths of them died...but the reason my 90 year old landlady downstairs hasn't gotten it and died is because I haven't gotten it and given it to her. So, even if I'd likely get a "bad flu"...she'd likely die and I'm glad we're all not following your advice, making it harder for me to help keep her alive. She's really super sweet and I've lived with her longer than most of her kids now.
So, fuck off. Masks on. Keep away from others when you can. We'll hopefully have a vaccine soon enough and then we can do everything the way we used to, including funding global scientific programs intended to catch these things where they happen and not turn them into pandemics in the first place...you know, the exact thing Trump defunded and killed in Wuhan that Obama created.
And who are you?
Why are we listening to you?
Except that if this was the
Except that if this was the flu, there wouldn't be more cases every day in Arizona, Texas, and California--COVID-19 is not behaving like a seasonal virus.
In case you haven't noticed, COVID-19 killed a lot more health care workers than the flu does. It killed a lot more subway workers, here and especially in New York, than the flu does.
My take on why our rate is low
1:) Massachusetts had it really bad and it scared people to take it seriously.
2:) We have strong, effective leadership who also took this seriously and made some ballsy decisions that have proven highly effective.
If we continue to be careful, I think the worst is over for us. If we get lax about distancing and masking we'll head right back into the soup that many states are just entering.
#1: Yes. No question.
#1: Yes. No question.
#2: I think Baker could have been better, but he also could have been a hell of a lot worse.
#3: it ain't over yet. Don't start getting sloppy and opening things too soon, Charlie.
#2
Yes, just look to DC for a primer on how NOT to act like a leader during a crisis.
You may be right, Gary, but
it seems like the rules regarding wearing masks out in public, and social distancing may have to continue for some time, in order to make sure. The re-opening of the Bay State in phases has to be done very slowly.