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Bay State tells Ocean State residents they have to quarantine if they come here after Friday
By adamg on Tue, 08/04/2020 - 8:35pm
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health says that effective Friday, Rhode Islanders coming into Massachusetts will either have to quarantine for 14 days or show proof of a negative Covid-19 test within 72 hours before their arrival here.
DPH says Rhode Island is showing an unacceptable rise in the number of Covid-19 cases and so it had to strike it from its list of states whose residents can come to Massachusetts like in the Before Times. The move shrinks the number of such states to seven: All the other New England states, New York, New Jersey and Hawaii.
The change does not apply to Rhode Island residents who are just driving through Massachusetts to get somewhere else - for example, people living on the border who are driving to their job in Rhode Island by way of Massachusetts roads.
Effective 8/7, Rhode Island has been removed from DPH’s lower risk state list for MA’s new travel order due to increases in both RI’s positive test rate and cases per 100,000.
— Mass. Public Health (@MassDPH) August 4, 2020
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Comments
Also exempted, if I
Also exempted, if I understand the state website correctly, would be Massachusetts residents who commute to RI for school or work. I know someone this applies to, I'm sure there are many others.
So if you commute but it's
So if you commute but it's less than once a week, that's considered riskier than people who go back and forth more often?
17 weekday commuter train round-trips to Providence
run from South Station. What does this mean for the people who ride these trains? There are also nine round-trips on Saturdays and seven on Sundays.
And does this mean that residents of Pawtucket can't drive across the state line to shop (for instance, at the Market Basket next to the South Attleboro train station)?
Enforcement
Will be zero....... Nothing to see here.
Charlie Baker's Kabuki Theater
With the Broadway stage closed indefinitely, at least we still have Charlie Baker's Kabuki Theater. This truly is more showmanship than content. Baker seemed genuinely proud last week when allegedly 1,000,000 people viewed his new quarrantine guidelines and 8000 actually went on to fill out the forms. That's right, 8000 out of one million.
I rarely watch local TV news but tuned in this weekend to watch the hurricane forecast. During the "news" portion of the broadcast, a 30-40 year old female traveler was interviewed after her flight had arrived at Logan. It appeared she felt betrayed and disappointed after working diligently to comply with all of Baker's paperwork while most others on her flight hadn't bothered with any of it and whizzed right through the airport/baggage claim to their ride. Who at the airport (or interstate) is charged with enforcing this? Certainly not the handful of troopers at the airport or on the road. Not the federal TSA or CBP. Not the 1000 of Baker's contact tracers, most already laid off due to the public's lack of interest. All of this theater for a disease with an average age of death still at 82, well above the age of US life-expectancy to begin with. The best part, the media covering it with a straight face and no pushback.
2020 is indeed a very strange year
I actually agree 100% with the anon who calls himself FISH.
Man who knows nothing about public health
Keeps fapping his keyboard as if he might know *the truth* that will save him from facing the incompetence of his and his sainted tainted president's decisions.
To be fair to Fish
Which I generally am not, both Charlie Baker and Trump are incompetent morons.
Charlie is just better spoken and less outwardly racist about it, but he's the guy who put political cronies in charge of state run nursing homes, turning them into charnal houses of death and misery.
Could he have saved some lives if Kushner wasn't actively trying to murder people in blue states? Possibly, but the system was set to fail when we made the care of elderly a for profit business.
Sort of
The orders are designed as much to reinforce to people the idea there is a global pandemic, stay the f*ck home for now. There aren't really enforcement mechanisms, although if you do something doltish like fly in from Florida to a house party it gives the state a way to punish people for being idiots, but if the order reduced travelers to and from hotspots by x % they've done what they intended to do. Banning interstate travel isnt happening and is problematic under the US system of governance, so since we cant/wont do what should be happening this is an imperfect, but positive, half measure
The Rhode Island one is less useful for a number of reasons.
If this becomes a permanent state of life we can start to set up and resource actual enforcement (checkpoints at the airport, old weigh station like checks on heavily travelled border roads/spot checks for papers elsewhere), but has legal pitfalls. Hopefully a combination of science and better Federal leadership in '21 will help make this a non-permanent normal.
Genocidal maniac
“Genocide the olds” is one hell of a eugenic line in the sand, you ghoul.
We've already done a damn good job of "Genocide the olds"
Well over 10% of the state's nursing home population has died and over half of the state's nursing home residents have tested positive for SARS-nCOV-2.
Unacceptable
The death rates a nursing homes (I can’t find the stat you cite) has been unacceptable since the start of this pandemic and it is further stomach-turning that Fish and many of his up-voters here on U-Hub believe it acceptable to further cull the nursing home population; Fish continually repeats that idea that these lives are disposable.
Prevent every death that can be prevented.
Stats
Kaiser Family Foundation reports a 2019 nursing home population in MA of 34,363. The state reported "more than 39,000 people per day in 2017" served by nursing homes. I just go with 40K to make the math more obvious.
Monday's dashboard from the Commonwealth detailed 5,512 deaths reported in long-term care facilities and 24,376 cases. The numbers speak for themselves.
The death rates aren't just unacceptable or stomach-turning. They are scandalous.
Fact is that restricting people from Rhode Island or Florida or California or Texas from entering the state won't effectively protect the elderly population in nursing homes -- especially when there's an exemption for commuters. If there's a legitimate concern about infection rates in RI, don't you think that commuters would be pretty much the key vector for spread into MA? Think it's a good idea for a nursing home worker to lives in RI to commute to work in MA? How about someone who works in an office in Boston with coworkers who have elderly/vulnerable family members at home, and takes the train with commuters in the same home situation?
Agree
Scandalous. If Baker, Cuomo et. al. ever run for public office again, they should be forced to recon with the long-term care facility disaster associated with COVID.
Furthermore, whatever the largest vector for COVID spread is, let’s prevent as may preventable deaths as possible.
I’m not educated enough to know if Baker’s RI ban is helpful or not, but I do recognize Fish’s dismissive comment about the average age of death being 82 as - to keep it civil - dehumanizing and irresponsible. It’s not like he made that comment in support of protecting vulnerable age groups, he’s saying certain people are disposable.
Um, maybe?
But fact is that what needs to be done to protect the elderly/vulnerable is pretty much exactly the same whether we lock down everyone else. The vulnerable do need to stay locked down and those who live with or care for them need to limit their exposure to the public as well.
And even the argument "let’s prevent as ma[n]y preventable deaths as possible" is a bait-and-switch from the original justification for the lockdowns -- "flattening the curve." I mean, I see why that's desirable but we don't shut down the state every year for flu season and we haven't yet banned cars even though that would prevent a bunch of deaths. And if we should "prevent as ma[n]y preventable deaths as possible" then we absolutely should ban commuters from entering or exiting the state. I mean, if it's not important to preserve jobs for restaurant workers then why do commuters into or out of the state get different treatment?
We are already making decisions about people being disposable. Disadvantaged kids are disposable -- they're going to fall even further behind with schools staying closed. Poor families are disposable, too, since a parent is going to have to stay home to take care of the kids who can't go to school. Small business owners are disposable; we hear stories daily about how the pandemic response has destroyed businesses that some have spent most of their adult lives building.
And instead of addressing what's probably the key vector of community spread -- private gatherings -- we instead have this hygiene theatre which seems likely to prevent not very much at all.
You swing off topic
Man, I am only trying to argue that Fish’s “the average age of death is 82, so the rest of us go back to normal argument” is grotesque. I’m not trying to debate the usefulness of cars and what prophylactic measures we should take in future flu seasons. It’s not relevant to the novel coronavirus and people keep trying to get me to defend positions I did not take.
I do, however, take issue with the long debunked talking point that the only goal of the lockdowns was to flatten the curve.
Flattening the curve was only step one to buy us time to figure out the ensuing phases. It was always said that reopening required crushing the curve (which could not be done until it was flattened). There was never any carrot dangles where if we simply flattened the curve we could just open everything back up.
The MA curve was flattened and depressed. Coronavirus is STILL HERE even if our numbers look good. There is a lie repeated that says the only goal was to flatten the curve. And it certainly not a bait-and-switch to say we now need to make every effort to keep the spread low; the goal was never to flatten the curve just to unleash COVID all over again.
No.
If it "was always said that reopening required crushing the curve" then there's no point in "flattening the curve." Crushing the curve requires more extreme versions of the measures required to flatten the curve -- like mass house arrest a la Wuhan. Crushing the curve flattens the curve as a side effect.
Flattening the curve was marketed as the way to buy time for more effective treatments and vaccines to be developed. https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/02/29/covid-19-is-now-in-50-coun... It had become evident by the end of February that containment had largely failed.
And to some degree, that has worked. Granted, deaths are a trailing indicator, but Texas' current spike is three months behind Massachusetts' -- and over the course of the pandemic, TX has reported over four times as many cases as MA, but nearly 1,000 fewer deaths to date. Even if we assume deaths trail cases by ~3 weeks, TX had over 2.5 times the number of cases on July 15 as MA does today. And that's with a population that is much browner than MA and generally in poorer health.
Same for California -- nearly 5x as many cases as MA but only 15% more deaths.
The national curve was flat.
Well, it looks like we need more time.
The national curve was flat, but at the end of May. FL, TX, AZ, CA, GA etc just said “f(orget) it!” That curve could have stayed flat, but instead we have 5 repeats of New York. Florida is registering the same number of COVID deaths as the entirety of Europe, ffs.
Those spikes were 100 percent preventable. Just as another spike in MA is totally within our control. At least during the current warm months.
Our cases are trending up in MA. There’s no need to rush back into 1000, 2000, or 3000 cases per day just because “they said all we had to do was flatten the curve”.
“Genocide the olds” is one
That's how you know they're the pro-life party.
Average age of death?
Can you reference/footnote your source for the "average age of death still at 82"? I followed along until I got to that and now I don't know what's based in fact and what is your opinion.
He is right on the number
Here is the latest daily state report - scroll down to "Deaths and Death Rate by Age Group."
However, this is not something to gaze upon in some sort of perverse delight, like he seems to be doing. It is, in fact, something Massachusetts should be ashamed of - we still have one of the country's highest total number of deaths, despite our relatively small size and the fact that so many people in nursing homes were just wiped out by the virus would probably make for a good analysis of the state's nursing homes to figure out just what made them uniquely vulnerable to the virus in a way that our death numbers are far higher in absolute terms than other states.
Also, what he ignores is that death is a lagging statistic for Covid-19. If our numbers continue to rise as they've been doing over the past week or so, deaths will go up as well, but this time not predominantly in the elderly population (if you scroll up from that Death page, you'll see the age of Covid-19 patients is lower).
Well, the average age is unlikely to go down that much
Simply because the death rate is vastly lower for younger populations. The death rate for those under 20 is 0% so far. The mortality rate for persons under 40 with confirmed positive tests is 0.12% -- and with real infection rates almost certainly being much higher, the mortality rate for those under 40 is likely well under 0.1%, if not closer to 0.01%. Even if we bump that up to under 50, the mortality rate with a confirmed case is 0.24%.
We'd have to infect virtually everyone in Massachusetts under 50 in order to generate a number of deaths in that cohort equal to the count in the 80+ population so far. No, I am not advocating doing that!!!
Yes, deaths are a lagging statistic but in the past month in MA, there have been 11 new deaths attributed to covid in persons under 50, with 6,385 new cases in that cohort. Meanwhile there have been 316 new deaths in the 80+ population over that same timespan. Between May 4 and August 4 the average age of hospitalization ticked down from 69 to 68 but the average age of death remained the same. Average age of cases came down from 53 to 50, but... early on, it was much more difficult to actually get a test, so one might expect that higher-risk (older, with co-morbidities) were prioritized in early days.
Honestly, if you think about how things work in nursing homes with low pay and poor training, it's not a huge surprise that things were so bad there. How many sick people went to work because managers demanded them to report? And it's not about privatization, either, when we look at what happened in the Soldiers' Homes.
When you can smell the fish,
When you can smell the fish, you know it's already past its prime...
It's ok, he's still under 82
so for now, he meets his own cutoff for lives worth caring about.
Well sure
He's also white, isn't he? So two for two in which lives matter.
If I go to Rhode Island for just a daytrip
such as to the RISD museum, or Federal Hill, or the Roger Williams Park Zoo, or the East Bay or Blackstone bike paths, without staying overnight, am I still subject to this order? These are all places easily reached from Boston by a combination of MBTA commuter rail and bicycle.
Yes.
Technically, just stepping across the border subjects one to this requirement unless one falls into an exception category.
That could damage attendance at the Pawtucket Arts Festival
which is still scheduled for September 4-13, and which I was really looking forward to attending. Maybe Rhode Island can drive the Covid rate down again by then, rendering the issue moot.
Which demonstrates the utter
Which demonstrates the utter absurdity of it all.
Take a trip to Rhode Island, daily, for 12 hours a day, for work: Exempt.
Take a trip to Rhode Island, one day, for 2 hours, for any other purpose: Subject to this nonsense.
Can anyone explain this "order" using public health/hygiene/epidemiological concepts? Anything other than politicians just trying to look like they're "doing something"?
Transit routes that cross the state line
Besides the MBTA and Amtrak rail services, buses from Rhode Island's RIPTA, Attleboro's GATRA, and Fall River's SRTA all cross the state line.
In normal times, there are also Peter Pan buses from Boston to Providence and Newport, and from Hyannis to Providence. I do not know if these are currently running.
I don't see how Massachusetts can possible monitor passengers on all of these buses.
It's way easier than tracking
It's way easier than tracking people in cars.