Vote Covid 45 super spreader! Thin the herd!!!

[Hawktawk]

Just wow. Adoring fans left to freeze after being stranded outside a superspreader 2 nights ago , half a dozen hospitalizations. Yesterday in florida thousands packed into a stadium without masks in 87% heat, numerous people passed out due to heat stroke.
Never mind the virus that people are testing positive for after every one of these superspreaders including hospitalizations and ICU for several at his NC rally.5 other stops have had definite traceable spread from the rallies.

Whether fuctopoluos wins or loses he's literally responsible for a thousand deaths a day now. Its 100% his fault at this point the sheer amount of this virus load in this country and he's going to do this every day till the election. Donnie Jr got up yesterday and said the death toll is "nothing" compared to other countries as 1 K plus died like every day and headed back up, pushing 100K new cases a day. Jared Kushner is on tape in april telling Bob Woodward that "Trump took the country back from the doctors" explaining how he had marginalized their control of the govt response. Over 180K people have died since that interview.

Even if he loses we still have to deal with this inept amatuer hour adminstration for another quarter of a year. We wont make it...

[RiverDog]

Just wow. Adoring fans left to freeze after being stranded outside a superspreader 2 nights ago , half a dozen hospitalizations. Yesterday in florida thousands packed into a stadium without masks in 87% heat, numerous people passed out due to heat stroke.
Never mind the virus that people are testing positive for after every one of these superspreaders including hospitalizations and ICU for several at his NC rally.5 other stops have had definite traceable spread from the rallies.

Whether fuctopoluos wins or loses he's literally responsible for a thousand deaths a day now. Its 100% his fault at this point the sheer amount of this virus load in this country and he's going to do this every day till the election. Donnie Jr got up yesterday and said the death toll is "nothing" compared to other countries as 1 K plus died like every day and headed back up, pushing 100K new cases a day. Jared Kushner is on tape in april telling Bob Woodward that "Trump took the country back from the doctors" explaining how he had marginalized their control of the govt response. Over 180K people have died since that interview.

Even if he loses we still have to deal with this inept amatuer hour adminstration for another quarter of a year. We wont make it...

Yea, I saw that. I'm not going so far as to say that it's 100% his fault as other countries are having similar problems, but there's no doubt that DJT has a lot of blood on his hands.

We'll get through it, or at least I know I will.

[Hawktawk]

By we I mean America as we know it . Models currently show without major course corrections deaths will triple to 3 k a day by January. There may be medical systems collapsing all around the country . It’s clear the Trump campaign strategy down the stretch is Covid fatigue , pick off late deciders worried about lock downs . Should he win is he going to change anything? How about if he loses ? My guess is he will be pardoning buddies , golfing and figuring out how to get asylum so he doesn’t rot in jail . That’s a bit facetious but with this guy who knows . I heard a chilling report Russian hackers are hitting our overwhelmed hospitals with ransom ware . Thet have struck in 5 states . I’m sure Trump will be all over that. We are in over our heads in every way .

[RiverDog]

By we I mean America as we know it . Models currently show without major course corrections deaths will triple to 3 k a day by January. There may be medical systems collapsing all around the country

Yes, I've seen the projections, but I don't think that our medical system is on the brink of collapsing. It's different now than it was back in April. We don't have the PPE problem we had back then and we've learned a lot about how to treat the disease. No one can be sure how it's all going to pan out, but it's not all doom and gloom.

It’s clear the Trump campaign strategy down the stretch is Covid fatigue , pick off late deciders worried about lock downs . Should he win is he going to change anything? How about if he loses ? My guess is he will be pardoning buddies , golfing and figuring out how to get asylum so he doesn’t rot in jail . That’s a bit facetious but with this guy who knows . I heard a chilling report Russian hackers are hitting our overwhelmed hospitals with ransom ware . Thet have struck in 5 states . I’m sure Trump will be all over that. We are in over our heads in every way .

I agree that Trump's strategy is covid fatigue, but it's a subject that resonates only with those who were already going to vote for him. It's been a trait of his entire presidency, catering only to his most ardent supporters. Only 4 days left, my friend!

As far as the Russian hackers goes, so far they haven't done a lot of damage, at least not yet. All that they've gotten to in this state is a dental office. Hopefully now that the word is out that they'll all be on alert for the cyber threat.

[mykc14]

By we I mean America as we know it . Models currently show without major course corrections deaths will triple to 3 k a day by January. There may be medical systems collapsing all around the country . It’s clear the Trump campaign strategy down the stretch is Covid fatigue , pick off late deciders worried about lock downs . Should he win is he going to change anything? How about if he loses ? My guess is he will be pardoning buddies , golfing and figuring out how to get asylum so he doesn’t rot in jail . That’s a bit facetious but with this guy who knows . I heard a chilling report Russian hackers are hitting our overwhelmed hospitals with ransom ware . Thet have struck in 5 states . I’m sure Trump will be all over that. We are in over our heads in every way .

Typically those projections don’t come to fruition. We were supposed to lose over 2 million based on initial projections and we won’t come anywhere near that. As cases are growing across the country hospitalizations and death percentages are way down. All projections surrounding ‘flattening the curve’ said roughly the same amount of people would get the virus but deaths would skyrocket when hospitals become overwhelmed, which hasn’t happened save some really bad decisions by certain governors. This isn’t to say that it’s still not a threat or that DJT should be having these rallies, I’m not saying that at all. What I am saying is that projections like this tend to be worst case and we are doing a much better job of treating the virus. Florida is a good example, they’ve had some of the loosest restrictions and their death rate is less than 2%. Again I’m not saying that’s good, just pointing out that we are doing better at treating the virus

[I-5]

We were supposed to lose over 2 million based on initial projections and we won’t come anywhere near that.

Whenever I see the 2 million deaths referenced, it's rarely mentioned that the number references if the country did NOTHING. As it is, most of the people who vehemently disagree with Trump are the ones wearing most (not all) of the masks, which is empirically proven in more successful countries to help stop the spread of the disease, along with social distancing. What if no one at all wore masks nor social distanced like at a Trump rally, for example?

[RiverDog]

We were supposed to lose over 2 million based on initial projections and we won’t come anywhere near that.

Whenever I see the 2 million deaths referenced, it's rarely mentioned that the number references if the country did NOTHING. As it is, most of the people who vehemently disagree with Trump are the ones wearing most (not all) of the masks, which is empirically proven in more successful countries to help stop the spread of the disease, along with social distancing. What if no one at all wore masks nor social distanced like at a Trump rally, for example?

A lot more than we have now. But I don't think that's the point.

The point is that we're doing a much better job of managing the virus. It's difficult to use a mortality rate as an indicator of improvement as positive tests determines the denominator and we weren't doing nearly as much testing in March as we are now. But if you look at the death rate of those sick enough to be hospitalized with the virus, the mortality rate has gone way down:

The study, which was of a single health system, finds that mortality has dropped among hospitalized patients by 18 percentage points since the pandemic began. Patients in the study had a 25.6% chance of dying at the start of the pandemic; they now have a 7.6% chance.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-sho ... eath-rates

The article goes on to say that COVID is still very serious and more deadly than other infectious diseases like the flu, but with the improvements we've made in treating the virus, it's not near the threat to our health care system like it was earlier this spring.

[mykc14]

Whenever I see the 2 million deaths referenced, it's rarely mentioned that the number references if the country did NOTHING. As it is, most of the people who vehemently disagree with Trump are the ones wearing most (not all) of the masks, which is empirically proven in more successful countries to help stop the spread of the disease, along with social distancing. What if no one at all wore masks nor social distanced like at a Trump rally, for example?

It’s hard to say exactly what would have happened but certainly more would have gotten sick/died. Major increases in death percentages tended to occur when hospitals became overwhelmed and it seems like that would have been much more likely had we done nothing. At the same time states who are pretty much open now aren’t seeing the major increase in death/hospitalization percentage that many predicted would happen. I want to be clear that I think the virus is a serious issue. I think the mask-less rallies, without social distancing, are idiotic and I always wear a mask in public. In no way do I think we should be completely opened up. I think we should be wearing masks in public and be smart about our choices in regards to social gatherings. I do, however, think businesses should be open, kids should be in schools, and Kids should be playing sports. All of those, of course with restrictions including masks and social distancing.

[RiverDog]

I want to be clear that I think the virus is a serious issue. I think the mask-less rallies, without social distancing, are idiotic and I always wear a mask in public. In no way do I think we should be completely opened up. I think we should be wearing masks in public and be smart about our choices in regards to social gatherings. I do, however, think businesses should be open, kids should be in schools, and Kids should be playing sports. All of those, of course with restrictions including masks and social distancing.

I don't agree with all of that. I think that most, but not all, businesses should be opened up. Nightclubs, for example, are huge super spreader venues and should not be back in business until the pandemic is virtually over. Many of the others, like restaurants and bars, should be allowed to open if they show that they're serious about following the guidelines, like adhering to capacity requirements, no more than 5 per table, insisting that employees and customers wear their masks, limited hours, and so on.

As far as extra curricular sports goes, they can wait until spring when they can be held outdoors and at a time when a vaccine becomes available. Push them back into summer if they have to, but I don't like the idea of 30 or so heavily breathing, sweaty bodies bouncing around in a gym then going home to their grandparents. That's just asking for it IMO.

[mykc14]

The point is that we're doing a much better job of managing the virus. It's difficult to use a mortality rate as an indicator of improvement as positive tests determines the denominator and we weren't doing nearly as much testing in March as we are now. But if you look at the death rate of those sick enough to be hospitalized with the virus, the mortality rate has gone way down:

The study, which was of a single health system, finds that mortality has dropped among hospitalized patients by 18 percentage points since the pandemic began. Patients in the study had a 25.6% chance of dying at the start of the pandemic; they now have a 7.6% chance.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-sho ... eath-rates

The article goes on to say that COVID is still very serious and more deadly than other infectious diseases like the flu, but with the improvements we've made in treating the virus, it's not near the threat to our health care system like it was earlier this spring.

I agree mortality rate isn’t perfect, but if anything it tends overestimate the risk of the virus as you obviously cant test everybody who has the virus, especially those who are asymptomatic. It also can’t account for false positive tests, but overall it does give an idea to how deadly the virus is. It isn’t the best indicator that we are doing better treating the virus, but when combined with hospitalization numbers being down it does suggest that we are.

Your data is in line with what I’ve been reading as well and suggests that we are in fact doing better at treating the virus. Along with articles discussing that school/sports haven’t been linked to mass spreading of the virus like many predicted. There is evidence to suggest that the virus rarely spreads in elementary schools/day cares that have opened up across the country.

[mykc14]

I don't agree with all of that. I think that most, but not all, businesses should be opened up. Nightclubs, for example, are huge super spreader venues and should not be back in business until the pandemic is virtually over. Many of the others, like restaurants and bars, should be allowed to open if they show that they're serious about following the guidelines, like adhering to capacity requirements, no more than 5 per table, insisting that employees and customers wear their masks, limited hours, and so on.

As far as extra curricular sports goes, they can wait until spring when they can be held outdoors and at a time when a vaccine becomes available. Push them back into summer if they have to, but I don't like the idea of 30 or so heavily breathing, sweaty bodies bouncing around in a gym then going home to their grandparents. That's just asking for it IMO.

I agree about night clubs remaining closed. As far as sports go there’s evidence to suggest that sports aren’t increasing COVID cases much, if at all. Here’s a pretty thorough study performed by the University of Wisconsin. It suggests that the COVID rate amongst student athletes between the ages of 14-17 is about the same as non-athletes. It’s not a perfect study but it definitely falls in line with smaller studies I have read and is pretty encouraging.

https://www.wissports.net/news_article/ ... f-covid-19

[I-5]

And my point is that if we all behaved the way people do at Trump rallies, we’d be surpassing 2 million deaths soon. That’s the irony of this ‘leadership’.

[mykc14]

And my point is that if we all behaved the way people do at Trump rallies, we’d be surpassing 2 million deaths soon. That’s the irony of this ‘leadership’.

I understand your point, my discussion with Riverdog went in a little bit of a different direction. My point was that, although I don't thing we should in anyway be behaving like the people at Trump rallies, I don't think the death toll would have reached near 2 million either way, and that those projections almost always are on the extreme side and are used to promote fear.

[RiverDog]

I agree mortality rate isn’t perfect, but if anything it tends overestimate the risk of the virus as you obviously cant test everybody who has the virus, especially those who are asymptomatic. It also can’t account for false positive tests, but overall it does give an idea to how deadly the virus is. It isn’t the best indicator that we are doing better treating the virus, but when combined with hospitalization numbers being down it does suggest that we are.

That's true with many infectious diseases, such as the flu. We may come down with it and never go to the doctor let alone get a diagnosis that becomes a statistic. In any event, I think we're closer to agreeing than disagreeing on this one particular topic.

Your data is in line with what I’ve been reading as well and suggests that we are in fact doing better at treating the virus. Along with articles discussing that school/sports haven’t been linked to mass spreading of the virus like many predicted. There is evidence to suggest that the virus rarely spreads in elementary schools/day cares that have opened up across the country.

I've seen the articles, too, but the data was collected in July through September before the weather got colder and drier, before people started moving indoors, and before the flu season had arrived.

I can understand the need for in person learning in a classroom environment, and IMO that's what the focus should be on. But interscholastic activities not only introduce players to high and medium risk activities, they're traveling from one community to another, increasing the chances of coming in contact with an infected person. IMO the benefit is not worth the risk.

[mykc14]

I've seen the articles, too, but the data was collected in July through September before the weather got colder and drier, before people started moving indoors, and before the flu season had arrived.

I can understand the need for in person learning in a classroom environment, and IMO that's what the focus should be on. But interscholastic activities not only introduce players to high and medium risk activities, they're traveling from one community to another, increasing the chances of coming in contact with an infected person. IMO the benefit is not worth the risk.

I agree that that the winter will probably see an increase in the numbers but the research above takes into account activities played indoors. Furthermore we could be playing outdoor sports right now through December. Many people want to wait to play until the Spring, but the reality is that the risk or lack of risk is going to be the same now as it is in January-March. If the study, which was pretty exhaustive, shows there was no greater risk for athletes than non-athletes it seems like that trend would continue in the winter. As far as travel goes the above study took that into account and it just doesn't seem to increase the risk. Right now it is almost worse as far as traveling goes. Teams from all over Washington are traveling to other states (mainly Idaho) and playing sports, specifically basketball but also 7-on-7 football tournaments. These teams are usually not set up through the school but are more like traveling teams. The way it is set up right now there are multiple teams from our county, each team consisting of kids from different cities within our county, who practice multiple times a week and then travel to Idaho on the weekends and play in tournaments against teams from who knows where in a completely uncontrolled environment and even that system isn't producing high numbers of COVID cases (or any in our area as of yet that can be linked to one of these teams/tournaments). These same kids then come to school football, baseball, track workouts which are extremely more controlled. To me a better system would be one in which the students are in a much more controlled environment, playing one sport and playing teams from the same general area (or at least the same state).

[RiverDog]

I agree that that the winter will probably see an increase in the numbers but the research above takes into account activities played indoors. Furthermore we could be playing outdoor sports right now through December. Many people want to wait to play until the Spring, but the reality is that the risk or lack of risk is going to be the same now as it is in January-March.

Not quite. What you aren't considering is the rate at which the virus is spreading now. Moving football and wrestling, the sports with the highest risk of transmission, to the spring buys us time. It spreads out the risk, or 'flattens the curve', as the saying goes. Currently the virus is out of control, with so many states showing dramatic increases in infections and hospitalizations.

The other thing that you're not considering is that we should have a vaccine by late this year or early next year. If we delay sports until March, we should have first responders and high risk individuals a vaccine. And as we discussed earlier, we're improving on our treatment of the disease. We should be better prepared. We should have more PPE's, more ICU units available. Plus it gets us closer to the end of the flu season and the weather will improve, reducing the risk of transmission.

If the study, which was pretty exhaustive, shows there was no greater risk for athletes than non-athletes it seems like that trend would continue in the winter. As far as travel goes the above study took that into account and it just doesn't seem to increase the risk. Right now it is almost worse as far as traveling goes. Teams from all over Washington are traveling to other states (mainly Idaho) and playing sports, specifically basketball but also 7-on-7 football tournaments. These teams are usually not set up through the school but are more like traveling teams. The way it is set up right now there are multiple teams from our county, each team consisting of kids from different cities within our county, who practice multiple times a week and then travel to Idaho on the weekends and play in tournaments against teams from who knows where in a completely uncontrolled environment and even that system isn't producing high numbers of COVID cases (or any in our area as of yet that can be linked to one of these teams/tournaments). These same kids then come to school football, baseball, track workouts which are extremely more controlled. To me a better system would be one in which the students are in a much more controlled environment, playing one sport and playing teams from the same general area (or at least the same state).

I'm not a research scientist, but my gut tells me that if you change the environment under which the study was done, ie summer vs. winter, predominantly outdoor activities vs. indoors, pandemic relatively under control like it was in July-Sept vs. out of control like it is now...that it would affect the subjects in the study. After all, each of those subjects goes home every night, goes to restaurants with their parents, etc. The conditions under which the study was done changes. I would be a lot more comfortable if the duration of the study was a year long vs. just a couple of months in the summer.

[Aseahawkfan]

In roughly 2 months if the polls hold true, it will be the Democrats who get to take responsibility for COVID19 from the Republicans. I can only hope they do a better job than this group of idiots did.

That's why I don't worry about all this crying about the Republican Party being done. The fact is people get unhappy when things don't go well. COVID19 is a beast to deal with. Americans hate the lockdowns, so if the Democratic answer for COVID19 is to continue hard lockdowns I expect a worse response than Europe is experiencing right now.

So we'll see what the Democrats bring to the table. I can't imagine they can screw it up worse than an idiot who wanted to dismiss it as no big deal, not wear his mask, get sick himself weeks before an election after making fun of his opponent for wearing a mask, then flouting COVID19 quarantine procedures to take a ride in front of his followers with his Secret Service personnel in the vehicle with him. If the Democrats avoid that level of stupid, they'll be starting off better than The Idiot in Chief.

[RiverDog]

In roughly 2 months if the polls hold true, it will be the Democrats who get to take responsibility for COVID19 from the Republicans. I can only hope they do a better job than this group of idiots did.

That's why I don't worry about all this crying about the Republican Party being done. The fact is people get unhappy when things don't go well. COVID19 is a beast to deal with. Americans hate the lockdowns, so if the Democratic answer for COVID19 is to continue hard lockdowns I expect a worse response than Europe is experiencing right now.

So we'll see what the Democrats bring to the table. I can't imagine they can screw it up worse than an idiot who wanted to dismiss it as no big deal, not wear his mask, get sick himself weeks before an election after making fun of his opponent for wearing a mask, then flouting COVID19 quarantine procedures to take a ride in front of his followers with his Secret Service personnel in the vehicle with him. If the Democrats avoid that level of stupid, they'll be starting off better than The Idiot in Chief.

It's going to be pretty difficult to pin the virus response on Biden. The genie is already out of the bottle. By the time he takes office, we should have a vaccine and distribution should already be in progress. If for some reason things go awry, if multiple vaccines don't work or have unexpected side effects and have to be pulled from the market, then he'd be called upon to make some decisions. But otherwise, he's essentially going to be a relief pitcher coming in to pitch in the 7th inning and trailing 15-4. Nothing he does is going to have a huge effect on the outcome.

What he can do is usher in some reforms and help us be better prepared for a future pandemic, things like re-establishing the pandemic task force that Trump disbanded, create a better network for manufacturing and maintaining an inventory of PPE's, reforming the CDC, re-examine our relationship with the WHO, etc. And, of course, we're going to be facing an economic recovery and resolution of some of the social problems it exposed, such as policing and race relations.

[mykc14]

Not quite. What you aren't considering is the rate at which the virus is spreading now. Moving football and wrestling, the sports with the highest risk of transmission, to the spring buys us time. It spreads out the risk, or 'flattens the curve', as the saying goes. Currently the virus is out of control, with so many states showing dramatic increases in infections and hospitalizations.

The other thing that you're not considering is that we should have a vaccine by late this year or early next year. If we delay sports until March, we should have first responders and high risk individuals a vaccine. And as we discussed earlier, we're improving on our treatment of the disease. We should be better prepared. We should have more PPE's, more ICU units available. Plus it gets us closer to the end of the flu season and the weather will improve, reducing the risk of transmission.


I'm not a research scientist, but my gut tells me that if you change the environment under which the study was done, ie summer vs. winter, predominantly outdoor activities vs. indoors, pandemic relatively under control like it was in July-Sept vs. out of control like it is now...that it would affect the subjects in the study. After all, each of those subjects goes home every night, goes to restaurants with their parents, etc. The conditions under which the study was done changes. I would be a lot more comfortable if the duration of the study was a year long vs. just a couple of months in the summer.

I am considering the rate at which the virus is spreading now. As a country we are currently trending to open more things up not close them down so the spread of the virus could be worse by the Spring, not better. You clearly have more faith in a vaccine then I do. If a vaccine is widely available by the Spring that would certainly help the numbers and obviously greatly reduce the spread of the virus. I am not seeing where we are having more hospitalizations now than we had in the summer. In fact nationally we are averaging less hospitalizations based on an average case per week than we did in April/May and July/Aug, although we are trending up. I would argue that the virus was actually worse in July/August, at least in terms of hospitalizations and deaths. In our state the Covid cases aren't even touching our available bed numbers. I look at our county statistics daily because I need to know our numbers which determines how we can practice. Here is a good website to use if you haven't looked at it yet:

https://coronavirus.wa.gov/what-you-nee ... -dashboard

You live in Benton county, right? You guys are currently using 6% of your beds for COVID cases. The fact is that most counties in our state have never been near using even 10% of their beds. As a State our COVID cases are up but the total beds occupied due to COVID are down from a high of 4.6% in April/May to 3.1% now.

I understand that the study was during Summer months but indoor sports still practice/play games indoors, so that shouldn't have a dramatic effect on the data. For example Summer Basketball practice is in a gym. Summer basketball games are played in gyms. The same would be true in Winter. What it doesn't factor in is the idea that the virus might be worse in the Winter. It may be. In fact it probably will be, but our state is deciding to begin HS sports in Winter! They are starting 2 High Risk HS Sports in the middle of December, with games starting the first or second week of January. If we started now or even better a month ago we would have data to suggest whether or not we should play sports in the Winter, but don't be surprised if you are hearing about basketball and wresting being played in High Schools across our state early January.

I agree I would feel more comfortable if the study were completed over the course of a year, but all we have to go on is this data. It's not great but it is pretty good. I am not arguing that we should put sports in front of people's lives or push this through just to play, but if the data shows that it doesn't increase the spread of COVID any more than normal teenage life then it could really be beneficial for kids.

[RiverDog]

I am considering the rate at which the virus is spreading now. As a country we are currently trending to open more things up not close them down so the spread of the virus could be worse by the Spring, not better. You clearly have more faith in a vaccine then I do. If a vaccine is widely available by the Spring that would certainly help the numbers and obviously greatly reduce the spread of the virus. I am not seeing where we are having more hospitalizations now than we had in the summer.

By spring, the flu season, which usually peaks sometime between December and February, will be past us. For any vaccine to be approved, it has to have a minimum of 50% efficacy, so yes, I do have quite a bit of faith in it at least reducing the scope of the pandemic. And you're right, hospital capacity isn't a problem in our area, but I'm still seeing reports of some areas having to shuffle patients to other facilities. From an article dated October 30th:

In the Rockies, small hospitals have no place to send patients when city hospitals are filling up. They report having to hold critical patients longer or transfer them far away, often out of state. Small rural hospitals are growing anxious about bed capacity right now. They usually send their most serious patients to bigger hospitals, but now those bigger facilities are overwhelmed.

...hospitals in many Mountain West cities which typically take them are filling up because of COVID-19, cutting off that lifeline - and not just for COVID patients. This week, the 17-bed Minidoka Memorial Hospital in Rupert, Idaho, a city of 6,000 outside Twin Falls, had a car crash victim:

TOM MURPHY: We realized that they had maybe a tear or some sort of internal injury that needed a higher level of care.

COHEN: Tom Murphy, the hospital's CEO, says it was a challenge to get that patient into the University of Utah hospital about 180 miles away. Last week, University's ICU was at 99% capacity with COVID patients. Utah's health department has warned nearby states to prepare for the possibility that nearly all out-of-state transfers could soon be cut off. And Minidoka is getting slammed by coronavirus, too.

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/30/92940224 ... ll-up-beds

You live in Benton county, right? You guys are currently using 6% of your beds for COVID cases. The fact is that most counties in our state have never been near using even 10% of their beds. As a State our COVID cases are up but the total beds occupied due to COVID are down from a high of 4.6% in April/May to 3.1% now.

As I recall, at one time in June, we were around 25% of our beds with COVID patients. Yakima County was one of the worst on the west coast. We aren't in bad shape at the moment, but cases are beginning to rise again, and officials are worried about the onset of colder weather and the flu season.

I understand that the study was during Summer months but indoor sports still practice/play games indoors, so that shouldn't have a dramatic effect on the data.

You're missing my point. My point is that the test subjects in the survey you quoted do not live in a bubble. They go out into the general public, go home to their families and friends, and so on. If the virus is less likely to spread during the summer months, then they would be less likely to contract it during the time the survey is being conducted. In order to do a complete survey that takes into account the variance in the weather and other seasonal variations, the survey would have to be conducted year round. You cannot expose test subjects to different environmental conditions and expect the same results.

To make my point a little more clear, if you conducted your survey in Ferry County, where there are no COVID cases, then it would be no surprise when your subjects in the study did not contract the virus. But if you held your survey in Yakima County where the virus is surging, you could reasonably expect that a number of your test subjects test positive no matter how good your adherence to protocols for your basketball team are.

I agree I would feel more comfortable if the study were completed over the course of a year, but all we have to go on is this data. It's not great but it is pretty good. I am not arguing that we should put sports in front of people's lives or push this through just to play, but if the data shows that it doesn't increase the spread of COVID any more than normal teenage life then it could really be beneficial for kids.

I don't see the harm in pushing high risk sports like football and wrestling back to the spring. The priority has to be on education, not recreation.

And just to add a personal note, 2020 is not the first year that high school athletes had to take one for the team due to events beyond their control. My dad, as a senior in high school, was a very good athlete and placed first in three events at the regional track meet. But he was unable to compete in the state meet, where he was sure to win in at least one event. Why? The year was 1943, and they canceled the state meet due to World War 2.

[Aseahawkfan]

It's going to be pretty difficult to pin the virus response on Biden. The genie is already out of the bottle. By the time he takes office, we should have a vaccine and distribution should already be in progress. If for some reason things go awry, if multiple vaccines don't work or have unexpected side effects and have to be pulled from the market, then he'd be called upon to make some decisions. But otherwise, he's essentially going to be a relief pitcher coming in to pitch in the 7th inning and trailing 15-4. Nothing he does is going to have a huge effect on the outcome.

What he can do is usher in some reforms and help us be better prepared for a future pandemic, things like re-establishing the pandemic task force that Trump disbanded, create a better network for manufacturing and maintaining an inventory of PPE's, reforming the CDC, re-examine our relationship with the WHO, etc. And, of course, we're going to be facing an economic recovery and resolution of some of the social problems it exposed, such as policing and race relations.

COVID19 does not appear to be close to over. It's spreading again. Europe is pushing lockdowns again and people are losing their mind. Even Sweden is apparently reversing course. We're not even deep into the winter and flu/cold season. It's just starting. So no, Biden isn't coming in as a relief pitcher.

The better analogy is Biden's coming in after the starting pitcher gave up 6 runs in the 1st inning. He's coming in while the big sluggers are coming to the plate known as the flu season, fall, and winter. This thing hit during the benign spring and summer. We have no vaccine close to proven. We have a mix of the bad nasty coming. Dems will get to manage this during what many are seeing as the worst of it.

I don't even know why you post some of this being in the country as long as you have been. It doesn't matter what's true or not. All that matters is if Biden is in office and this doesn't get cleaned up, then he and the Democrats will take the blame. That's how it works. How it has always worked. How it always will work. No one goes, "Gee, this must be the other party's fault because they screwed up." Only the diehards play that blame game. The swing voters are all about, "What is happening right now and who is in power right now." That's what they care about. That's why Congress flip flops. The Democrats no matter how many ways you try to spin this are being sent to The White House for one main thing: clean this mfing COVID19 mess up.

[mykc14]

You're missing my point.

There was a lot in your last response and I appreciate the thoughtful reply and discussion in general. I want to respond to all of it but I will be on my phone all weekend so I'll just try to keep it to a few highlights.

I don't think I'm missing your point. You're saying that because the survey was conducted in the summer we are not exactly sure if the results would be the same in the winter because typically virus like the flu spread more during Winter months. I agree that the virus will probably be worse in the winter. Here's what I am saying. The survey wasn't about the COVID rate in the general population, it's the idea that the same number of kids are going to get COVID whether we have sports or not. The research showed that teenagers between the ages of 14-17 who were involved in sports got sick at the same rate as teenagers who were not involved in sports. So lets say you take 100 teenagers. 50 aren't involved in sports (call them group A) and 50 are involved in sports (group B). Over the course of the summer 10 teenagers from group A got sick and 10 teenagers from group B got sick. Both groups got sick at the same rate. It is not unreasonable to take that data and say, during the Winter, when the virus will probably spread more you could expect these results, using the same numbers as above, but in the Winter instead of each group having 10 infected maybe you have 15 infected. At the end of the day out of 100 teenagers you would have had 30 infected whether they played sports or not. I understand that we don't know for sure that ratio would continue in the winter. I could go into all of the details as to why it might or might not (in the summer Group A might party more because it is warm so their numbers won't be as high in the winter) or (In the Winter the Group A students don't get together as much but when they do they are indoors more due to the weather so they might actually have a higher rate in the winter). At the end of the day I agree we don't know for sure but it's not unreasonable to assume that the ratio from the study would stay the same. I interact with HS students on a daily basis the kids that went out and partied before COVID are out partying now. The kids who hung out with their best friends a lot before COVID are hanging out now. Many of the kids who played sports are playing sports now. The HS students who are going to get COVID, by and large, are going to get COVID whether they play sports or not. I would also say it would be something that is going to be easy to follow. If we start sports and we begin to see an increase of cases that are directly connected to sports we can pause the season or cancel them.

At the end of the day I agree with you, the first thing should be the education of our kids and then sports, but I do think we need to look at research and open things up reasonably. We could be having this same discussion about opening schools. All of the evidence supports that idea that opening school doesn't lead to a drastic increase in virus activity, but that research was conducted over summer months as well. Should we not open schools because we don't know if those results will hold up in Winter, or can we take that data, use it to inform us to make the best decision possible, and then adjust if we find something different? I do understand that education is more important that sports so maybe you would say it is worth the risk.

As far as Yakima goes, I remember it was bad there for awhile but even at it's worst they were 'only' occupying 23% of their beds with COVID patients. It looks like you guys were at 18% at your worst, not good. The good news is your cases are still up (you are averaging about 5 cases less per day then when you were at your worst) but your hospital beds used for COVID are down over 60%. I am sure there are individual pockets that are bad across the US, like the one you mentioned in Idaho, but overall our hospitalizations are down, although sometimes its hard to know what to believe. I can remember when Yakima was bad. Here is an article discussing how they had 'No beds left for patients' suggesting that they were already full of COVID patients, yet the state website shows that they were 'only' using 19% of their beds for COVID.

https://kimatv.com/news/local/yakima-ho ... r-patients


I don't want this to sound like I don't take COVID seriously, because I do. Being a teacher, coach, involved in other youth outreach stuff, and married to a healthcare worker I am at a higher risk of infection than many. I just want us to make educated responses to the epidemic based on the scientific research that is available, not based on fear mongering, political leverage, or making a point about our individual rights.

[RiverDog]

The survey wasn't about the COVID rate in the general population, it's the idea that the same number of kids are going to get COVID whether we have sports or not. The research showed that teenagers between the ages of 14-17 who were involved in sports got sick at the same rate as teenagers who were not involved in sports.

The object of the survey might have been to research teenagers involved in sports, but unless you can take into account the changing environmental conditions under which the test subjects are exposed to and factor it into the formula, it's not going to be a fair test. The control group in the study, and the rest of the teenage participants in the general population, do not spend 100% of their time in a bubble. The infection rate could vary depending on environmental conditions. On that note, I'll end my remarks regarding that particular survey as I get the impression that we're chasing our tails.

The other thing that I haven't mentioned is that you're relying on a single survey. I don't think being dependent on one study to make such life or death, consequential decisions over activities that are deemed non essential is wise, especially when there's a reasonable alternative available (delaying high risk sports until spring).

I don't want this to sound like I don't take COVID seriously, because I do. Being a teacher, coach, involved in other youth outreach stuff, and married to a healthcare worker I am at a higher risk of infection than many. I just want us to make educated responses to the epidemic based on the scientific research that is available, not based on fear mongering, political leverage, or making a point about our individual rights.

I don't get the impression that you're not taking COVID seriously. But I do think that you're not taking into account the unknown aspects about this virus. We have not seen what can happen when we combine it with the flu season, which peaks between December and February. We do not know how it will behave during the entire course of the winter when temperatures, the lack of sunshine, and lower humidity, conditions more favorable for virus transmission, are more prevalent than they were when the virus first got going in mid March of 2020. By the time the virus got going last year, people had already started their migration to the great outdoors. We don't know how bad it will get when people are confined indoors for 4 or 5 months. Last spring, the virus was limited to the big cities and ports of entry, specifically NYC. Now it's saturated coast to coast throughout the entire country.

I understand that it's easy for me to sit in my recliner and preach to others about our response. My wife and I are retired, we have a relatively small family, and our kids/grandkids are out of the nest and well into adulthood. No sacrifice is too great for someone else to make. Nevertheless, that's my 2 cents worth.

Anyhow, it's a good discussion and even though I might not completely agree with you, I appreciate your thoughts on the matter. That's why I was glad to see you start posting in here as you bring a different perspective to our small little group.

[RiverDog]

COVID19 does not appear to be close to over. It's spreading again. Europe is pushing lockdowns again and people are losing their mind. Even Sweden is apparently reversing course. We're not even deep into the winter and flu/cold season. It's just starting. So no, Biden isn't coming in as a relief pitcher.

That's true, but most of the decisions, both good and bad, have already been made. If, like one of his ads states, he emphasizes manufacturing PPE's domestically instead of relying on foreign companies, that's not going to happen soon enough to have any noticeable effect. If he re-establishes a pandemic response team, it's going to take them time to reverse the course of decisions that have already been made. About the only thing he'll be able to do is facilitate the distribution of vaccines, get more medical grade freezers to the distribution points, respond to governor's requests for federal resources, and so on. Those are important decisions and can help us avoid more deaths and help bring the pandemic to a quicker end, but they cannot undo the damage that Trump...and to be fair, other governors and government agencies....did during the critical first few months early in the pandemic.

I don't even know why you post some of this being in the country as long as you have been. It doesn't matter what's true or not. All that matters is if Biden is in office and this doesn't get cleaned up, then he and the Democrats will take the blame. That's how it works. How it has always worked. How it always will work. No one goes, "Gee, this must be the other party's fault because they screwed up." Only the diehards play that blame game. The swing voters are all about, "What is happening right now and who is in power right now." That's what they care about. That's why Congress flip flops. The Democrats no matter how many ways you try to spin this are being sent to The White House for one main thing: clean this mfing COVID19 mess up.

Of course, there's going to be an attempt to assign blame. I am only speaking for myself.

To use another analogy, just as it would not be fair to credit or blame Biden for the coronavirus response, it would not be fair to credit or blame Harry Truman for his role in World War 2. He became POTUS very late in the war after Germany and Japan were virtually defeated, most of the momentous decisions, both good and bad, like the Lend Lease Act, the Manhattan Project, the relocation of Japanese-Americans, and so on, had already been made. The only momentous decision he made during the fighting was to drop the bomb on Japan. His contributions, like Biden's will be with the pandemic, was post war decisions like Potsdam, ending lend/lease, participation in the UN, the Marshall plan, and so on.

[RiverDog]

I just came across this article. We can't get hung up simply on hospitalization rates to gauge our health care system's capacity to handle the current surge of coronavirus cases:

In many cases, it’s not a lack of hospital beds, therapies or equipment that worry managers amid the surge, with someone dying from COVID-19 in the U.S. nearly every two minutes. It’s the depleted and exhausted hospitals staffs needed to care for those who need life-sustaining therapies.

The head of the Utah Hospital Association this week warned the situation is getting so dire hospitals there might soon need to ration care. Hospitals in North and South Dakota are seeking staff reinforcements to care for patients in crowded intensive care units. And in Wisconsin, hospitals are opening makeshift ICU wings even as they desperately look for nurses and other clinicians to staff the facilities.

“We can keep converting ICU space,” said Jeffrey Pothof, an emergency room doctor in Madison, Wisconsin. “But the constraint will be the staffing … that’s the thing that worries us the most right now.

Banner Health, Arizona’s largest health system, recruited more than 1,000 contract nurses and respiratory therapists from June through mid-July. Without those extra trained workers, the hospital might have used similar measures that Utah hospitals are now considering – rationing care.

Banner Health CEO Peter Fine worries hospitals can’t depend on stopgap staffing again.

“The real issue is staff burnout,” Fine said. “It’s a very real phenomenon and with a countrywide breakout we no longer can count on contracted staff to save us.”

Staffing agencies that place travel nurses in hospitals and clinics say they’ve never been busier. In the past four weeks, RN Network, part of Salt Lake City-based CHG Healthcare, has fielded a 130% increase in staffing requests, said spokesman Chad Saley.

https://news.yahoo.com/hospitals-overwh ... 27524.html

[mykc14]

I just came across this article. We can't get hung up simply on hospitalization rates to gauge our health care system's capacity to handle the current surge of coronavirus cases:

In many cases, it’s not a lack of hospital beds, therapies or equipment that worry managers amid the surge, with someone dying from COVID-19 in the U.S. nearly every two minutes. It’s the depleted and exhausted hospitals staffs needed to care for those who need life-sustaining therapies.

The head of the Utah Hospital Association this week warned the situation is getting so dire hospitals there might soon need to ration care. Hospitals in North and South Dakota are seeking staff reinforcements to care for patients in crowded intensive care units. And in Wisconsin, hospitals are opening makeshift ICU wings even as they desperately look for nurses and other clinicians to staff the facilities.

“We can keep converting ICU space,” said Jeffrey Pothof, an emergency room doctor in Madison, Wisconsin. “But the constraint will be the staffing … that’s the thing that worries us the most right now.

Banner Health, Arizona’s largest health system, recruited more than 1,000 contract nurses and respiratory therapists from June through mid-July. Without those extra trained workers, the hospital might have used similar measures that Utah hospitals are now considering – rationing care.

Banner Health CEO Peter Fine worries hospitals can’t depend on stopgap staffing again.

“The real issue is staff burnout,” Fine said. “It’s a very real phenomenon and with a countrywide breakout we no longer can count on contracted staff to save us.”

Staffing agencies that place travel nurses in hospitals and clinics say they’ve never been busier. In the past four weeks, RN Network, part of Salt Lake City-based CHG Healthcare, has fielded a 130% increase in staffing requests, said spokesman Chad Saley.

https://news.yahoo.com/hospitals-overwh ... 27524.html

I can agree this is a problem and have seen it first hand. My wife is a nurse and although she has moved to part time recently she and her colleagues are totally burned out and it’s not directly a result of COVID, it’s a result of her hospital system trying to recoup the money they lost during COVID. When COVID first hit they used it as an opportunity to make widespread changes to their depart and even laid some nurses off. When they were able to return to business as usual they made even more widespread changes, increasing patient load. Since June 12 of 28 nurses have either transferred departments, found another job, or retired. They are burnt out and then you put them in an environment with a flu/COVID outbreak. It’s not going to be a good situation. I can see that as a bigger problem than the beds space.

[RiverDog]

I can agree this (staffing shortages) is a problem and have seen it first hand. My wife is a nurse and although she has moved to part time recently she and her colleagues are totally burned out and it’s not directly a result of COVID, it’s a result of her hospital system trying to recoup the money they lost during COVID. When COVID first hit they used it as an opportunity to make widespread changes to their depart and even laid some nurses off. When they were able to return to business as usual they made even more widespread changes, increasing patient load. Since June 12 of 28 nurses have either transferred departments, found another job, or retired. They are burnt out and then you put them in an environment with a flu/COVID outbreak. It’s not going to be a good situation. I can see that as a bigger problem than the beds space.

My daughter is a charge nurse at an urgent care clinic in Spokane, and they're going through some pretty rough times, particularly in neighboring northern Idaho:

In Idaho, Kootenai, Boundary and Shoshone counties moved to substantial, or “red,” risk categories as case counts climbed Thursday.

Over the past seven days, Boundary County had an average of more than 57 new COVID-19 cases every day. Kootenai had an average of about 50 and Shoshone had an average of about 40, according to a Panhandle Health news release.

Kootenai Health hospital was at 99% capacity last week, treating 31 patients with COVID-19. As of Thursday, the hospital had 41 patients with the disease. Of those, 13 were in critical care, the release said.

The hospital in Coeur d’Alene has been operating at 90% or higher capacity for two weeks. It has medical staff out due to illness and has not been able to fill open positions for traveling nurses, according to the release.

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/ ... 00-as-tes/

And we are just beginning to get into the flu season.

All of this supports my contention that now is not the time to be expanding school activities, or for that matter any other type of activity, beyond those that are absolutely necessary. Indeed, a number of states are talking about shutting down again.

[Aseahawkfan]

That's true, but most of the decisions, both good and bad, have already been made. If, like one of his ads states, he emphasizes manufacturing PPE's domestically instead of relying on foreign companies, that's not going to happen soon enough to have any noticeable effect. If he re-establishes a pandemic response team, it's going to take them time to reverse the course of decisions that have already been made. About the only thing he'll be able to do is facilitate the distribution of vaccines, get more medical grade freezers to the distribution points, respond to governor's requests for federal resources, and so on. Those are important decisions and can help us avoid more deaths and help bring the pandemic to a quicker end, but they cannot undo the damage that Trump...and to be fair, other governors and government agencies....did during the critical first few months early in the pandemic.

This will be entirely dependent on how bad things get. Like with this election, until the coronavirus is under control it's not under control. We could easily see a huge flare up as we get deeper into winter and flu season. That's where key decisions on a Federal level with contact tracing, focused lockdowns, PPE, and all the areas where the Idiot in Chief tried to dismiss things Biden's decisions will matter.

Trump dropped the ball. And because he did so we have almost nothing in place to deal with this virus during the possible worst season for it. We have lost World Leadership because Trump pulled us from the WHO and likes to argue with foreign leaders. So much that Trump has done has left it so the Democrats will come into office with a huge mess, not a short run to the finish line. More like an Earthquake with massive clean up on a national and global scale. America should have been at the forefront of the coronavirus with our massive resources, huge number of advanced medical companies, advanced universities, and business base, but instead we're one of the worst nations in the world at handling the coronavirus. If we had stepped up as we should have, we not only could have but should have taken leadership on this virus. But you know we have an Idiot in in office whose ego makes him think he can just find scientists to agree with his viewpoint and somehow the virus will bow to his immense ego.

When Biden takes office, hopefully he will marshal all the power and wealth of the United States into a coordinated plan that doesn't require him to get all the credit or be the center of attention to crush this virus as should have happened.

Of course, there's going to be an attempt to assign blame. I am only speaking for myself.

To use another analogy, just as it would not be fair to credit or blame Biden for the coronavirus response, it would not be fair to credit or blame Harry Truman for his role in World War 2. He became POTUS very late in the war after Germany and Japan were virtually defeated, most of the momentous decisions, both good and bad, like the Lend Lease Act, the Manhattan Project, the relocation of Japanese-Americans, and so on, had already been made. The only momentous decision he made during the fighting was to drop the bomb on Japan. His contributions, like Biden's will be with the pandemic, was post war decisions like Potsdam, ending lend/lease, participation in the UN, the Marshall plan, and so on.

There is how things work. You and I both know how this will go.

Republicans will try to blame Biden and the Democrats for everything.

Democrats will try to blame Trump and the Republicans for everything.

Swing voters will decide based on what they think is the problem right now and what they want fixed most right now assigning blame to who is in office right now punishing them at the ballot box for perceived failures.

That's our system. That's why we have the shifts we have. I hope it continues and no party garners so much power they get to push their will far too much for far too long because the progressive left is one scary group. You watch any of these Ocasio-Cortez videos and how hard the left is pushing her? My goodness her ideas are terrible. She talks about taxing a wealthy person 70 cents on every dollar they earn over a certain amount like it's perfectly moral and the wealthy person is just being an immoral and bad person for not wanting to give 70 cents of every dollar they earn to the government. I don't even know many moderate American Democrats who believe that trash. I know some who think the wealthy should higher taxes and have some loopholes closed, but not pay 70 percent of their wealth to the government like they did in the 50s and 60s which pretty much gave rise to conservatism because the radical socialist left was taking away freedoms and abusing their powers of taxation. I can't imagine many would tolerate a 60 or 70% tax rate on income. That would be ridiculous.

[RiverDog]

That's true, but most of the decisions, both good and bad, have already been made. If, like one of his ads states, he emphasizes manufacturing PPE's domestically instead of relying on foreign companies, that's not going to happen soon enough to have any noticeable effect. If he re-establishes a pandemic response team, it's going to take them time to reverse the course of decisions that have already been made. About the only thing he'll be able to do is facilitate the distribution of vaccines, get more medical grade freezers to the distribution points, respond to governor's requests for federal resources, and so on. Those are important decisions and can help us avoid more deaths and help bring the pandemic to a quicker end, but they cannot undo the damage that Trump...and to be fair, other governors and government agencies....did during the critical first few months early in the pandemic.

This will be entirely dependent on how bad things get.

Not so much as how bad things get, but how quickly things get back under control. If none of the vaccines work, if the virus mutates into a more dangerous strain, or something else unexpected that throws off the timing, then the decisions Biden makes would come into play.

Trump dropped the ball. And because he did so we have almost nothing in place to deal with this virus during the possible worst season for it. We have lost World Leadership because Trump pulled us from the WHO and likes to argue with foreign leaders. So much that Trump has done has left it so the Democrats will come into office with a huge mess, not a short run to the finish line. More like an Earthquake with massive clean up on a national and global scale. America should have been at the forefront of the coronavirus with our massive resources, huge number of advanced medical companies, advanced universities, and business base, but instead we're one of the worst nations in the world at handling the coronavirus. If we had stepped up as we should have, we not only could have but should have taken leadership on this virus. But you know we have an Idiot in in office whose ego makes him think he can just find scientists to agree with his viewpoint and somehow the virus will bow to his immense ego.

Even Hawktalk couldn't have said it better. Of course, I agree.

I hope it continues and no party garners so much power they get to push their will far too much for far too long because the progressive left is one scary group. You watch any of these Ocasio-Cortez videos and how hard the left is pushing her? My goodness her ideas are terrible. She talks about taxing a wealthy person 70 cents on every dollar they earn over a certain amount like it's perfectly moral and the wealthy person is just being an immoral and bad person for not wanting to give 70 cents of every dollar they earn to the government. I don't even know many moderate American Democrats who believe that trash. I know some who think the wealthy should higher taxes and have some loopholes closed, but not pay 70 percent of their wealth to the government like they did in the 50s and 60s which pretty much gave rise to conservatism because the radical socialist left was taking away freedoms and abusing their powers of taxation. I can't imagine many would tolerate a 60 or 70% tax rate on income. That would be ridiculous.

Neither of the two parties can hold onto the White House for longer than 8 years. The R's did it with Reagan and Bush 41, but that was the only time since the end of WW2 that it's happened. If the D's sweep into power and control both branches as I think is likely, it won't be too long before they over reach by proposing stuff like free college, debt forgiveness, the green new deal, reparations for slavery, and so forth, and lose their advantage, perhaps as early as 2022.

[Aseahawkfan]

Not so much as how bad things get, but how quickly things get back under control. If none of the vaccines work, if the virus mutates into a more dangerous strain, or something else unexpected that throws off the timing, then the decisions Biden makes would come into play.

The decisions Biden makes will come into play right now. Biden is talking about a national lockdown, which he has clearly stated he will do if he takes office. He is talking about a nationwide mask mandate enforced by fines. He is talking about contact tracing programs in place. Biden's decisions will carry a lot of weight. Aren't you at listening to what the guy is saying before you vote for him? You didn't cast your vote and go, "I hate Trump. Here you go."

Biden is planning to take control of the coronavirus response, which is what he has been elected to do. We have done very little to set up a response on a national level. Biden intends to have nation-wide plan ready to go as soon as he enters office.

Once he takes office, the coronavirus becomes the responsibility of the Democrats which they have specifically been sent to Washington to deal with. It is the number one topic on people's agenda by a mile. Trump not having a plan. Just talking out his behind. Ignoring the science. Not wearing a mask. Politicizing the virus. This is what people want stopped. They want a plan in place. They want some idea of when this will end. They want to know the government is getting this thing taken care of on a national scale. That hasn't been done at all right now. That means how Biden handles it and his decisions have a huge amount of weight because the Idiot in Chief did next to nothing but be a total idiot.

"If we test a lot, we'll find a lot of cases. Which makes it look worse than it is." You remember that trash? That's how Trump saw testing. He wanted to hide the coronavirus like it was some minor scandal at the Miss America Pageant that would make him look bad. Fricking moron.

So I don't agree. Biden's decisions are absolutely essential to calming America, letting them know we now have national plan, and providing a timetable and guidelines for a return to work and coordination on a global scale. All those decisions will be judged as the death toll continues to rise, the economic damage continues to mount, and the associated problems continue.

I don't know why people think the economy is fine. It isn't. It is a very polarized economy. We are not close to out of the water even with the stock market at all time highs. If the Democrats don't handle this well, then we will see another collapse. Even once we clear the coronavirus, there will be stimulus necessary for recovery. Even then it won't get sorted out well because of the sheer number of people that don't know what they're doing with money and absent the stimulus will have no way to make up the deferred mortgages, rents, and debt build up for survival. Maybe it's because not many follow the economic news closely, but we're pretty far from out of the woods on this economically. It's why I'm still sitting on mostly cash as the market rises substantially on stimulus and enthusiasm, not real economic numbers that indicate a healthy economy. The layoffs are just starting, bud. Just getting started and will only look slightly better due to holiday season hiring. But I expect the unemployment raise to rise again before we get anything back to normal without massive and sustained stimulus and debt.

[RiverDog]

The decisions Biden makes will come into play right now. Biden is talking about a national lockdown, which he has clearly stated he will do if he takes office. He is talking about a nationwide mask mandate enforced by fines. He is talking about contact tracing programs in place. Biden's decisions will carry a lot of weight. Aren't you at listening to what the guy is saying before you vote for him? You didn't cast your vote and go, "I hate Trump. Here you go."

Biden is going to be faced with the same limitations that so frustrated Trump when he wanted to force states to open up for business. Biden is going to need the cooperation of all 50 governors if he wants to shut the entire nation down.

Once he takes office, the coronavirus becomes the responsibility of the Democrats which they have specifically been sent to Washington to deal with. It is the number one topic on people's agenda by a mile. Trump not having a plan. Just talking out his behind. Ignoring the science. Not wearing a mask. Politicizing the virus. This is what people want stopped. They want a plan in place. They want some idea of when this will end. They want to know the government is getting this thing taken care of on a national scale. That hasn't been done at all right now. That means how Biden handles it and his decisions have a huge amount of weight because the Idiot in Chief did next to nothing but be a total idiot.

"If we test a lot, we'll find a lot of cases. Which makes it look worse than it is." You remember that trash? That's how Trump saw testing. He wanted to hide the coronavirus like it was some minor scandal at the Miss America Pageant that would make him look bad. Fricking moron.

I agree with a lot of that, but history is going to assign the coronavirus almost exclusively on Trump, for the reasons you mentioned and more.

So I don't agree. Biden's decisions are absolutely essential to calming America, letting them know we now have national plan, and providing a timetable and guidelines for a return to work and coordination on a global scale.

They are important decisions in our recovery from the coronavirus and I don't want to lessen their importance, but they cannot undo the damage that Trump has done. Biden isn't going to be able to dig up 300,0000 dead bodies and make them come alive.

[mykc14]

And we are just beginning to get into the flu season.

All of this supports my contention that now is not the time to be expanding school activities, or for that matter any other type of activity, beyothose that are absolutely necessary. Indeed, a number of states are talking about shutting down again.

Yeah, that is when it gets bad, when hospitals get overwhelmed. A lot of states experienced something like that when they opened up more, hopefully Idaho and Montana follow the same path as Florida where hospitals were running pretty high a Dow seem to have leveled off. I agree now is not the best time to be expanding school activities, but I’m not as optimistic that there will be a best time. It seems like May/June would be better, but we don’t know for sure. It seems like playing Spring sports in the fall would have been the best time to start, but I understand it’s not ideal. We’ll see if the WIAA starts in December/January as planned with Winter sports (basketball and wrestling are both high risk). I think it would be better to start now and have games before we get too far in flu season and see if there is an increase of cases. If there’s not they could continue after Winter break, but if there are any concerns they can shut it down. At any rate I understand why anybody is hesitant to start things like sports, but if it really doesn’t increase risks for kids it is something to look at. As far as this being the only study, it is the only exhaustive study I’ve read but there is a ton of antidotal evidence from 40 many other states that aren’t seeing huge increases directly related to sports.

[RiverDog]

As far as this being the only study, it is the only exhaustive study I’ve read but there is a ton of antidotal evidence from 40 many other states that aren’t seeing huge increases directly related to sports.

At this point, the virus is so saturated and so prevalent throughout the country that it's almost impossible to determine the source of an infection.

Gone are the days when Americans could easily understand the virus by tracking rising case numbers back to discrete sources — the crowded factory, the troubled nursing home, the rowdy bar. Now, there are so many cases, in so many places, that many people are coming to a frightening conclusion: They have no idea where the virus is spreading.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/31/us/c ... where.html

At this point, I don't think we can trust any study or survey on the spread of the virus and conclude how a person that tested positive got infected. There simply is not an unaffected control group anywhere in the nation from which to conduct an experiment on.

[Aseahawkfan]

Biden is going to be faced with the same limitations that so frustrated Trump when he wanted to force states to open up for business. Biden is going to need the cooperation of all 50 governors if he wants to shut the entire nation down.

Biden will get the cooperation.

Trump could have gotten all his governors on board. He didn't even try. His answer was to let them do what they want, blame the Democrats when Democrats complained no help was coming, and act like an ass. I still can't believe I have friends who think Trump did fine and he represents hope for the nation. How bad do you have to be at processing information to think Trump's handling of the coronavirus was acceptable for a president?

I gave this guy the benefit of the doubt at the start of all this because it blind-sided everyone except a handful of Asian nations like South Korea and Taiwan. But once he showed no regard for contact tracing, questioned testing, and started to politicize the virus, it became apparent this idiot thought he could just grumble, blame, and shout his way out of this. He showed terrible leadership. He emboldened his followers to make ludicrous claims that were not at all in line with the mounting evidence.

The tipping point for me was Italy. I watched Italy closely to see how big they blew up. Once they passed he 2 in 10,000 mark, I knew we were in for a bad time. China's lying numbers seriously threw the world off. I still don't buy those numbers. 85,000 cases and 3000 deaths my behind. China should be punished by the world community for how they handled the coronavirus, but not in the middle of it. After this is done though, the world community should come down on China like the Hammer of Thor in regards to their lies, which were worse than Trump's.

Trump got more terrible and stupid as the virus went on. But the initial egregious failure on the coronavirus was on China's leadership. The WHO and global health organizations went off China's obviously doctored numbers when devising policy for containing the virus on a global scale. They obviously lied.

Even once Trump could see that China lied, he just tried to lie and BS his way through it too. Fricking moron.

BIden needs to get leadership on this again for America. Then needs to draw the global community together to absolutely hammer China on this. They gotta absolutely agree to more open information on any kind of medical crisis like this or suffer severe, severe consequences.

[RiverDog]

Biden will get the cooperation.

Trump could have gotten all his governors on board. He didn't even try. His answer was to let them do what they want, blame the Democrats when Democrats complained no help was coming, and act like an ass. I still can't believe I have friends who think Trump did fine and he represents hope for the nation. How bad do you have to be at processing information to think Trump's handling of the coronavirus was acceptable for a president?

Trump could have gotten a helluva lot more cooperation than he did if he had a plan, but neither he nor Biden would/will ever get 100% cooperation on a plan that originates inside the beltway. And you don't have to convince me how bad Trump's handling of the coronavirus was.

I gave this guy the benefit of the doubt at the start of all this because it blind-sided everyone except a handful of Asian nations like South Korea and Taiwan. But once he showed no regard for contact tracing, questioned testing, and started to politicize the virus, it became apparent this idiot thought he could just grumble, blame, and shout his way out of this. He showed terrible leadership. He emboldened his followers to make ludicrous claims that were not at all in line with the mounting evidence.

The tipping point for me was Italy. I watched Italy closely to see how big they blew up. Once they passed he 2 in 10,000 mark, I knew we were in for a bad time. China's lying numbers seriously threw the world off. I still don't buy those numbers. 85,000 cases and 3000 deaths my behind. China should be punished by the world community for how they handled the coronavirus, but not in the middle of it. After this is done though, the world community should come down on China like the Hammer of Thor in regards to their lies, which were worse than Trump's.

Trump got more terrible and stupid as the virus went on. But the initial egregious failure on the coronavirus was on China's leadership. The WHO and global health organizations went off China's obviously doctored numbers when devising policy for containing the virus on a global scale. They obviously lied.

Even once Trump could see that China lied, he just tried to lie and BS his way through it too. Fricking moron.

Yep.

Biden needs to get leadership on this again for America. Then needs to draw the global community together to absolutely hammer China on this. They gotta absolutely agree to more open information on any kind of medical crisis like this or suffer severe, severe consequences.

Biden can do a better job of working with the global community than Trump did, but it's still going to be limited to a dissecting of what went wrong in our response to this crisis and improvements to our preparedness for future pandemics. He's going to be entering the game too late to have any significant effect on the current crisis.

[I-5]

Choking in late. I don’t know if Biden, if he wins, will institute a lockdown to help slow down the spread. But if he does, it will likely be because americans simply refuse to confirm to known best practices: 1) universal mask wearing and 2) social distancing. Taiwan is a smaller country, but even per capita they have the best numbers, and never instituted a lockdown. But they ALL wear masks. Americans would rather die, literally.

[Aseahawkfan]

Choking in late. I don’t know if Biden, if he wins, will institute a lockdown to help slow down the spread. But if he does, it will likely be because americans simply refuse to confirm to known best practices: 1) universal mask wearing and 2) social distancing. Taiwan is a smaller country, but even per capita they have the best numbers, and never instituted a lockdown. But they ALL wear masks. Americans would rather die, literally.

They're an island. Island nations have better natural boundaries for controlling this. We can't be compared to these tiny, isolated nations with tight immigration control. We have none of that.

But we can still do substantially better. We're America for for F's sake. We have more money, science, and ability to coordinate than any nation in the world. We just have bad leadership on so many levels at the moment, but fueled from the top down.

[I-5]

My point is we can do better without having to lock down, but as Riv and others have mentioned before, Americans are too skeptical to ever follow a national mandate when it comes to individual behaviour on behalf of public safety (ie wearing masks), which would necessitate more enforceable measures like closing businesses. That’s the sad reality of human nature, at least in the US. Asian countries by contrast have no problem with people following orders, no matter which asian country you’re talking about. They just simply do it.

[RiverDog]

My point is we can do better without having to lock down, but as Riv and others have mentioned before, Americans are too skeptical to ever follow a national mandate when it comes to individual behaviour on behalf of public safety (ie wearing masks), which would necessitate more enforceable measures like closing businesses. That’s the sad reality of human nature, at least in the US. Asian countries by contrast have no problem with people following orders, no matter which asian country you’re talking about. They just simply do it.

From my personal observations, every single one of the businesses that I've gone into for the past 3 months have been very good about complying with mask and social distancing mandates. Without exception, all store employees are wearing masks and 99% or greater of the customers are wearing them. Unless the experts are wrong and mask wearing is ineffective, that's not where people are contracting the disease.

From what our local health department is saying, the majority of transmissions in my community are occurring within families as they continue to have relatively large gatherings of 8-12 family members of which they neither wear masks or maintain their distance. Therefore, shutting down businesses isn't the answer.

[Aseahawkfan]

My point is we can do better without having to lock down, but as Riv and others have mentioned before, Americans are too skeptical to ever follow a national mandate when it comes to individual behaviour on behalf of public safety (ie wearing masks), which would necessitate more enforceable measures like closing businesses. That’s the sad reality of human nature, at least in the US. Asian countries by contrast have no problem with people following orders, no matter which asian country you’re talking about. They just simply do it.

When you have a president who acts like wearing a mask is some kind of infringement on his manhood, then sure, Americans will follow suit. Put a president in office who makes it a social duty to wear a mask, more will comply. A jackass in the White House politicizing mask wearing is a big part of the problem.