Texas to open 100%

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

This is accurate to my point.

it doesn’t matter why you are coughing or sneezing. Right now that is an inappropriate thing to be doing in public even with a mask on. I apologize if that’s inconvenient for some, but that’s the way it is.

No the appropriate thing to do is seek testing if you believe you have symptoms that overlap and isolate while you are awaiting testing NOT just stay home for ever and ever which is what your comment was. People cannot stay home for the entire year if their allergies are that way, or 6 months if they are that way. You've forgotten your comment have you? The one where you say seek treatment? People with allergies do, don't assume they don't. Anyways it's an argument as old as time. Extremes don't really do people much good IMO so I try to stay away from them. You want public compliance, you've also got to be reasonable. That's the way it is

 

[EACarlson]

We really have no idea what would have been, actually.

populations that have a higher average age will have more deaths even with the exact same mandates and compliance.

populations that are more obese will have more deaths and more hospitalizations with recovery than those who are less so.

you can’t really reduce spread, illness, and morbidity to just one factor. If you could, then we could just eliminate that one factor.

So you are saying that any data comparing different areas is not data that can be compared?

Reducing spread, illness and morbidity to just one factor is exactly what many in this thread are doing with relation to the TX statewide mask mandate and/or removing capacity limits.

 

[winterwhite]

No the appropriate thing to do is seek testing if you believe you have symptoms that overlap and isolate while you are awaiting testing NOT just stay home for ever and ever. People cannot stay home for the entire year if their allergies are that way, or 6 months if they are that way. You've forgotten your comment have you? The one where you say seek treatment? People with allergies do, don't assume they don't. Anyways it's an argument as old as time. Extremes don't really do people much good IMO so I try to stay away from them. You want public compliance, you've also got to be reasonable. That's the way it is

If you are walking around with symptoms of the illness currently causing a pandemic, you can expect to get dirty looks (at a minimum) or be asked to leave. Probably worst case is that you get assaulted. That’s your prerogative I guess, for going out when sick people are supposed to stay home.

 

[Starport Seven-Five]

The data does not seem to have borne this out though. We are now just about a year from when the first mandates and lock downs went into effect, those areas have not had 39% less the amount of covid infections and certainly not 39% less covid deaths than areas that have had fewer mandates and lockdowns.

I did a brief analysis in another thread that showed a pretty convincing correlation between cases and mask mandates within the US:
https://www.disboards.com/threads/h...s-finally-ending.3828285/page-7#post-62753173
The states at the top have multiples more cases than the states at the bottom so I think that 39% is a pretty safe estimate. It's especially crazy to me that states like ND/SD are leading despite low population densities as the lack of human to human contact should naturally slow transmission.

I didn't look at deaths as closely but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't have as strong of correlation. Death rates early on were higher than what they are today due to advances in treatments and a few states getting swamped. This is great news of course but makes the data harder to draw conclusions from as conditions have changed so much.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I think you missed the point that this is in the middle of a pandemic. Why you are coughing and sneezing is of little importance when we're dealing with a virus where many carriers are asymptomatic, and where most people who are vaccinated can become asymptomatic carriers.

We already know that 25 percent of people infected with influenza are asymptomatic carriers, and this is the way the influenza virus is spread. People aren't catching it from people who are too sick to work; most people catch influenza from an asymptomatic carrier who is a close contact. SARS-CoV-2 is the same. Thank goodness for genome sequencing -- we might finally know how much we don't know.

No I got the point, I responded back on solely the poster's chosen words. You seek out testing, isolate while waiting for testing, you don't just stay home the entire year because you have allergies. I haven't advocated for going around sneezing or coughing so there's just no reason to try and lecture about that

And to be frank I know we're in the middle of the pandemic and while I don't expect you to know necessarily my viewpoint throughout the threads you're barking up the wrong tree on that one especially about asymptomatic carriers and more.

 

[winterwhite]

So you are saying that any data comparing different areas is not data that can be compared?

Reducing spread, illness and morbidity to just one factor is exactly what many in this thread are doing with relation to the TX statewide mask mandate and/or removing capacity limits.

I’m saying that data comparing populations with statistically different populations in reference to factors means that it is difficult to control the data for those factors. It’s not possible to attribute those differences to just mask wearing without some assumptions and statistical math to attempt to remove other factors.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

If you are walking around with symptoms of the illness currently causing a pandemic, you can expect to get dirty looks (at a minimum) or be asked to leave. Probably worst case is that you get assaulted. That’s your prerogative I guess, for going out when sick people are supposed to stay home.

I'm speaking towards the comment I quoted, that's it. No need to try and put words in my mouth.

 

[Pyotr]

My state was used by the CDC for at least one study (well a study was done by a university and the cdc used the data for report). Basically they were saying at least with our state it led to fewer cases per day on average with the counties that opted into the mask mandate. And the counties that opted out all of them increased in covid cases. I believe my county was something like 6.5 or so fewer cases per day per 100,000 people (for reference our county has 602,000 people so that would be something like 39 or so fewer cases per day).

This is about my state and covers June 1st-August 23rd with our mask mandate starting July 3rd. "After the governor’s executive order, COVID-19 incidence (calculated as the 7-day rolling average number of new daily cases per 100,000 population) decreased (mean decrease of 0.08 cases per 100,000 per day; net decrease of 6%) among counties with a mask mandate (mandated counties) but continued to increase (mean increase of 0.11 cases per 100,000 per day; net increase of 100%) among counties without a mask mandate (nonmandated counties)."

I kinda agree with the other people in so much that I don't think you're reading the article you linked correctly or you're inferring something. Though I do understand what you are trying to get at. I think it would be worth studying very in-depth in the future but right now the data isn't saying "don't keep on with mask mandates they aren't doing anything".

Are you referring to the Kansas study from last July? If you are, it was completed before the massive fall surge. Did the counties with the mandates perform better? Yes. Are masks a silver bullet to the pandemic? No.

Everyone needs to get a vaccine when it’s available to them. This is the way.

 

[Heigh-Ho]

I think you missed the point that this is in the middle of a pandemic.

I'm not trying to speak for that other person but they probably felt like they were being talked down to. I pop in and out of this forum but I've been able to pick up things here and there. There are posters who I've come to remember and for that poster in particular they very aware we're in a pandemic. I also really didn't see them talking about coughing or sneezing as in saying that was going to be acceptable. I think they were just trying to say if you have allergies staying home just because of that, etc. If you have cause to believe you may have covid you definitely should go get tested.

To the point about people thinking it's allergies when it's not. Most of the stories I've read the people who thought it was just allergies weren't chronic sufferers or their symptoms didn't match up with normal ones they had if they did have a history of allergies. That is mostly what is happening, it's not a simple "they thought it was allergies but it wasn't". It's a bit like I saw months ago a discussion about how news stories would talk about someone not having underlying health conditions but you read up on them and they clearly did.

I don't think you're going to find public health officials telling someone with allergies to just stay home for months at a time only due to having allergies which was the initial point. They would recommend you seek testing if you have cause to believe it's not merely allergies and to practice other public health measures. They would tell you to stay home if you sought testing while you await the results, I agree on that.

What people need to hear is about testing, hearing you need to stay home for the whole year or for the duration of your normal allergy season doesn't actually get to the root part of the public health message. The public health message is about seeking testing, wearing a mask and practicing other good public health measures.

 

[EACarlson]

The states at the top have multiples more cases than the states at the bottom so I think that 39% is a pretty safe estimate. It's especially crazy to me that states like ND/SD are leading despite low population densities as the lack of human to human contact should naturally slow transmission.

I didn't look at deaths as closely but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't have as strong of correlation. Death rates early on were higher than what they are today due to advances in treatments and a few states getting swamped. This is great news of course but makes the data harder to draw conclusions from as conditions have changed so much.

You're analysis is based on the only difference between the states is a mask requirement. There are many other contributing factors and correlation is not causation. ND and SD have a much higher percentage of Indigenous, and many more high risk occupations per capita than many more urbanized states. There are many more jobs that can't be done at home.

 

[DisneyJamieCA]

Are you referring to the Kansas study from last July? If you are, it was completed before the massive fall surge. Did the counties with the mandates perform better? Yes. Are masks a silver bullet to the pandemic? No.
View attachment 561054
Everyone needs to get a vaccine when it’s available to them. This is the way.

Nobody has ever claimed that masks alone were enough. It’s always been masks, distance and proper hygiene. I don’t know why the argument always centers around masks alone.

I do agree with everybody who can be vaccinated should be vaccinated.

 

[redrosesix]

If I am getting these numbers correct, the difference between the two is .19/100,000 which in your county of 602,000 would mean a difference of approximately 1.2 cases per day or 8 per week with a mask mandate vs without.

The data does not seem to have borne this out though. We are now just about a year from when the first mandates and lock downs went into effect, those areas have not had 39% less the amount of covid infections and certainly not 39% less covid deaths than areas that have had fewer mandates and lockdowns.

But again, we are dealing with growth rates, not percentage increase. We know that the R0 of SARS-CoV-2 is probably 6 ie. each infected person infects 6 more people, each of those infects 6 more people and so on and so on. So the percentage of people infected won't just grow, it will grow faster and faster over time. Imagine a snowball that is rolling down a hill. It gets bigger and bigger as it collects more snow. But as it goes downhill it picks up speed at a faster and faster rate, so it collects more snow at a faster and faster rate. Your goal in the US isn't even stopping that snowball from rolling downhill --- you have so many people infected that you're still trying to slow that snowball down.

I find it very frustrating to watch what is happening in the US. I remember 9/11 and how devastating it was for you all to lose 3k people in one day, but now you're losing more than that every single day and a lot of you seem not to care at all. You're all hung up on whether mask mandates work ie. whether the government telling you that you have to wear a mask works. Didn't it ever occur to you that it's worth it to try to save lives, whether or not the government tells you do do it? So sure -- do what you like and let those planes keep smashing into those buildings every day. I just find it all heartbreaking. I don't get why people don't care.

From what I saw you never really gave public health measures a good chance. No state locked down hard or enforced public health measures and even in the states that introduced measures, a lot of people didn't comply. You didn't close state or national borders or impose quarantines on people entering the country in the way that countries like Taiwan did.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Are you referring to the Kansas study from last July? If you are, it was completed before the massive fall surge. Did the counties with the mandates perform better? Yes. Are masks a silver bullet to the pandemic? No.
View attachment 561054
Everyone needs to get a vaccine when it’s available to them. This is the way.

Yes however we've watched it unfold here from the beginning. The first state level significant bump occurred in mid to late June. That's why the governor added the mask mandate and to start right before 4th of July. The most populated counties opted into the mask mandate and buffered the effects at a state level of the increases whereas there were counties that opted out that saw skyrocketing in their cases over the summer when the counties that opted in saw a leveling out.

The rural counties got hit late and got hit hard relative to their populations. The more populated counties got hit earlier. The last county to have no cases finally got one in mid-August. The state looks at case rates per 1,000 and when you look at that it's fairly large difference with the heavily populated areas and the rural counties. Number of cases the more populated areas have the most but they do not have the most with respects to their population size. The only difference is that a few counties with meatpacking got hit early as well. When towards the end of November the governor tried again with masks many more counties joined in.

The masks acted like a softening blow. They themselves were not solely responsible. Without masks the spread increased very rapidly in places unmitigated. Fall surges happened just about everywhere and in part people do not typically wear masks inside their homes with their family and you gather inside more. But I can only imagine if in my metro no one was wearing a mask how that would have panned out. The timeframe I was talking about doesn't mean that the data was wrong for the timeframe reviewed.

And I don't recall anyone saying they were a silver bullet.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Nobody has ever claimed that masks alone were enough. It’s always been masks, distance and proper hygiene. I don’t know why the argument always centers around masks alone.

I do agree with everybody who can be vaccinated should be vaccinated.

*sigh* I don't know either. It's like people grasp on that so they can throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's part of an overall mitigation strategy. Does anyone think the only thing we could do to mitigate spread in this pandemic is to wash hands? Doubtful.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Yeah @Heigh-Ho kinda got what I was getting at explained it a bit better than I think I was sorry @redrosesix wasn't trying to make you feel like you didn't have good information to share

 

[DeeBee3]

I am cringing writing this, but I think it's important so.....there are other serious issues we need to take into consideration in addition to covid. The alarming rate of adolescent suicide, rates of depression, drug/alcohol abuse, overdose, general need for mental health treatment that has gone unavailable during shutdowns (sometimes online sessions don't help). These things have skyrocketed and they had to many thousands of deaths over the last year. You can't just focus on 1 disease.

My comment is overly simplistic but I'm just trying to point out some other very important issue during this difficult time. The final outcomes and statistics from this last year will be seen in years to come, especially with children and lack of schooling.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I find it very frustrating to watch what is happening in the US.

I try to keep an open mind about other countries because the truth is you won't know what is actually going on. I'm on a thread that posters come from various countries. There are some overlap in public attitudes that are shared in the U.S. and then there aren't. And countries aren't perfect, I think it's disingenuous to portray that because many countries have their own issues from scandals, to riots, lack of compliance, to youths flaunting disregard to the rules, etc. And right now the inequality over distribution between countries bound by agreements or in some cases vaccines supply dried up portrays that the U.S. ain't doing so bad in the vaccine front.

But I look at things more on an informational way that's is personally speaking.

I remember 9/11 and how devastating it was for you all to lose 3k people in one day, but now you're losing more than that every single day and a lot of you seem not to care at all.

Respectfully the only time I will bring up 9/11 in comparison to this pandemic is to say how we collectively came together and put aside our differences. I will not ever use 9/11 to compare people caring or not caring about deaths.

 

[FairestOfThemAll37]

But again, we are dealing with growth rates, not percentage increase. We know that the R0 of SARS-CoV-2 is probably 6 ie. each infected person infects 6 more people, each of those infects 6 more people and so on and so on. So the percentage of people infected won't just grow, it will grow faster and faster over time. Imagine a snowball that is rolling down a hill. It gets bigger and bigger as it collects more snow. But as it goes downhill it picks up speed at a faster and faster rate, so it collects more snow at a faster and faster rate. Your goal in the US isn't even stopping that snowball from rolling downhill --- you have so many people infected that you're still trying to slow that snowball down.

I find it very frustrating to watch what is happening in the US. I remember 9/11 and how devastating it was for you all to lose 3k people in one day, but now you're losing more than that every single day and a lot of you seem not to care at all. You're all hung up on whether mask mandates work ie. whether the government telling you that you have to wear a mask works. Didn't it ever occur to you that it's worth it to try to save lives, whether or not the government tells you do do it? So sure -- do what you like and let those planes keep smashing into those buildings every day. I just find it all heartbreaking. I don't get why people don't care.

From what I saw you never really gave public health measures a good chance. No state locked down hard or enforced public health measures and even in the states that introduced measures, a lot of people didn't comply. You didn't close state or national borders or impose quarantines on people entering the country in the way that countries like Taiwan did.

To your last paragraph, lockdowns in the US are limited to the powers granted to the government. It wasn’t possible to shut down interstate travel or close state borders, that goes directly against our Constitution. The Fed does have limited powers to halt interstate travel but some of those powers go against the rights granted to the states public health and quarantine rights.

Some states called into question the legality of the lockdown measures and the state courts deemed them unconstitutional and they had to be lifted. Many of these mandates were directives under special authority due to state of emergency that can sometimes be challenged. I think those outside of the Us (and even those in it) don’t realize that our Fed powers are rather limited and even on a State level, our Constitution limits a lot of what measures can be taken compared to many other countries.


You cannot compare the US to Taiwan. The reach of the government is night and day.

 

[redrosesix]

I'm not trying to speak for that other person but they probably felt like they were being talked down to. I pop in and out of this forum but I've been able to pick up things here and there. There are posters who I've come to remember and for that poster in particular they very aware we're in a pandemic. I also really didn't see them talking about coughing or sneezing as in saying that was going to be acceptable. I think they were just trying to say if you have allergies staying home just because of that, etc. If you have cause to believe you may have covid you definitely should go get tested.

To the point about people thinking it's allergies when it's not. Most of the stories I've read the people who thought it was just allergies weren't chronic sufferers or their symptoms didn't match up with normal ones they had if they did have a history of allergies. That is mostly what is happening, it's not a simple "they thought it was allergies but it wasn't". It's a bit like I saw months ago a discussion about how news stories would talk about someone not having underlying health conditions but you read up on them and they clearly did.

I don't think you're going to find public health officials telling someone with allergies to just stay home for months at a time only due to having allergies which was the initial point. They would recommend you seek testing if you have cause to believe it's not merely allergies and to practice other public health measures. They would tell you to stay home if you sought testing while you await the results, I agree on that.

What people need to hear is about testing, hearing you need to stay home for the whole year or for the duration of your normal allergy season doesn't actually get to the root part of the public health message. The public health message is about seeking testing, wearing a mask and practicing other good public health measures.

I think that rapid testing of the general population is the way forward, and when you get there people who do have allergies will be tested the same as people who are not sneezing or coughing.

No I got the point, I responded back on solely the poster's chosen words. You seek out testing, isolate while waiting for testing, you don't just stay home the entire year because you have allergies. I haven't advocated for going around sneezing or coughing so there's just no reason to try and lecture about that

And to be frank I know we're in the middle of the pandemic and while I don't expect you to know necessarily my viewpoint throughout the threads you're barking up the wrong tree on that one especially about asymptomatic carriers and more.

I was just pointing out that her words were "in the middle of a pandemic". It wasn't a lecture -- just an elaboration.

I have asthma and there are times when I'm coughing. I get that nobody who doesn't know me would assume I'm not sick but lol I find it harder to not cough when I'm trying not to cough.

 

[mom2rtk]

I remember 9/11 and how devastating it was for you all to lose 3k people in one day, but now you're losing more than that every single day and a lot of you seem not to care at all.

Thankfully numbers are on a downward trajectory. 1459 yesterday. 7 day rolling average is 1731.