How Strict Are You With Social Distancing?

[ponyboy]

Closing in on 105,000 deaths....and counting. If this is an "American Success Story"......we need to redefine what "winning" looking like.

In hindsight, with what we know now, it's apparent that the virus was already well established here before anyone had a clue. So looking back, what would have been your solution to preventing any of those deaths?

No city here ever ran out of hospital beds or ventilators. Our medical infrastructure, while getting extremely busy for a time in some places, was never overran. We had enough facilities setup that many were barely used. So many nurses went to NYC that some were turned away because there wasn't a job for them which is exactly what happened to a friend of my ex-wife.

What is the magical answer that would have saved any or all those people from a high communicable disease that nobody on the planet has a treatment for?

 

[mjkacmom]

The biggest problem I see is that many people think that we are somehow "stopping" this whole thing with masks and social distancing. That if we just stay home for a little longer then everything will be "safe". Except we aren't stopping anything, merely slowing it down. None of the steps we've taken are solutions, only reactions. If people are waiting for the virus to die off to declare it "safe" then they'll be waiting until the end of time because most likely it's never going away. They complain that things are happening "too soon" but they can't explain how long they think we should wait, just that we need to wait until it's "Safer", whatever that means.

I'm not sure how long it's going to take for them to understand any of this but I wish they would hurry up. Lol

I don’t think many are thinking this, I think more are thinking it’s gone and we can resume like as normal. Healthcare workers deal with patients all day and have a lower risk of infection because they are taking safety measures. Some states that opened up have folks going back to business as usual. The more people who avoid getting Covid until a vaccine or effective treatment is in place, the better. Yes, businesses have to open up, but do we need to pack bars, have parties, protest?

 

[ponyboy]

I don’t think many are thinking this, I think more are thinking it’s gone and we can resume like as normal. Healthcare workers deal with patients all day and have a lower risk of infection because they are taking safety measures. Some states that opened up have folks going back to business as usual. The more people who avoid getting Covid until a vaccine or effective treatment is in place, the better. Yes, businesses have to open up, but do we need to pack bars, have parties, protest?

Currently a treatment and/or vaccine is a pipe dream which may or may not ever materialize. It took decades to find effective treatments for HIV/AIDS. So how long does the world need to wait to resume normal life?

Plus the fact that many people are beginning to realize that this thing isn't near as bad as they claimed in the beginning. Early on the news was reporting 5% or higher mortality rates and as things have progressed and they've discovered how many asymptomatic cases exist it's continued to drop. The CDC is now estimating .26% mortality rate and that will probably even drop further as testing progresses.

In the end it all boils down to personal choice. If people want to go to the bar or have a party then that's up to them. If someone else doesn't feel comfortable going outside then that's their choice and no one else's to make.

 

[mjkacmom]

Currently a treatment and/or vaccine is a pipe dream which may or may not ever materialize. It took decades to find effective treatments for HIV/AIDS. So how long does the world need to wait to resume normal life?

Plus the fact that many people are beginning to realize that this thing isn't near as bad as they claimed in the beginning. Early on the news was reporting 5% or higher mortality rates and as things have progressed and they've discovered how many asymptomatic cases exist it's continued to drop. The CDC is now estimating .26% mortality rate and that will probably even drop further as testing progresses.

In the end it all boils down to personal choice. If people want to go to the bar or have a party then that's up to them. If someone else doesn't feel comfortable going outside then that's their choice and no one else's to make.

We’ve had new cases here daily since the start. I personally know several middle aged men with kids in school who were vented for weeks, one didn’t make it. Hospitals here were overwhelmed, as were our ambulances. If we go back to normal, the herd will definitely be culled, and folks that otherwise would’ve lived long lives will die. Why wait until we have more tests and tracking when we can go bowling and to concerts? Americans are weak, spoiled, we haven’t had a war on our soil since the civil war. Other counties endured years of having to go without for years while we cry in our pillows because we can’t eat in restaurants or get pedicures.

 

[ponyboy]

We’ve had new cases here daily since the start. I personally know several middle aged men with kids in school who were vented for weeks, one didn’t make it. Hospitals here were overwhelmed, as were our ambulances. If we go back to normal, the herd will definitely be culled, and folks that otherwise would’ve lived long lives will die. Why wait until we have more tests and tracking when we can go bowling and to concerts? Americans are weak, spoiled, we haven’t had a war on our soil since the civil war. Other counties endured years of having to go without for years while we cry in our pillows because we can’t eat in restaurants or get pedicures.

I'm afraid the herd is going to be culled regardless of what we do. I can't envision a way of stopping it unless we could just somehow sequester people at home without any contact at all which just isn't feasible.

I won't disagree that Americans have grown weak and spoiled but it doesn't just have to do with wars or things like that, our social policies have something to do with it to. People cry now when they just get offended. The rest of it is just the byproduct of living in a 1st world country for so long.

 

[skyblue17]

Meanwhile, someone who was at that the Lake of the Ozarks literal cesspool tested positive, which means every single other person there was likely exposed, and then went home to wherever they live.

 

[dvcgirl67]

In hindsight, with what we know now, it's apparent that the virus was already well established here before anyone had a clue. So looking back, what would have been your solution to preventing any of those deaths?

What is the magical answer that would have saved any or all those people from a high communicable disease that nobody on the planet has a treatment for?

Well, we can look at Germany for what our response could have looked like. Or rather, what our response absolutely *should* have looked like. Being the Greatest most Successful Nation since the dawn of man...and all.

Like Germany, for one, we should have a national response. We didn't have that. We still don't have that. We should have locked down sooner. We should have had enough PPE in place. We should have been testing like crazy, and we should have had a plan in place from the second we locked down....about how we would have opened back up. Germany has a population that is 25% of ours....80 million people. Yet they've had just 10% of the amount of cases when compared to the United States. And just 8% the number of deaths when compared with us. Their leaders stood together and did not blame everyone and everything else. It was a coordinated national response led by a woman, who also happens to be a scientist. That's about as good as it gets for a large Western nation.

Simply "closing the border with China" and then literally doing *nothing*....for the entire month of February, was, in hindsight, not a good way to go.

If we were proactive and not woefully and completely unprepared for this, we'd have 732,000 cases instead of the 1,800,000 we have. And the more heartbreaking number....if we'd been proactive with an actual national response, or, just some sort of....plan.....we'd have roughly 34,000 deaths instead of the 105,000 that we have now.

 

[dvcgirl67]

Meanwhile, someone who was at that the Lake of the Ozarks literal cesspool tested positive, which means every single other person there was likely exposed, and then went home to wherever they live.

Shocker. They were all told to "self quarantine for 14 days" after what appeared to be the "most disgusting pool party in the history of history". I'm sure that happened.

 

[Colleen27]

The biggest problem I see is that many people think that we are somehow "stopping" this whole thing with masks and social distancing. That if we just stay home for a little longer then everything will be "safe". Except we aren't stopping anything, merely slowing it down. None of the steps we've taken are solutions, only reactions. If people are waiting for the virus to die off to declare it "safe" then they'll be waiting until the end of time because most likely it's never going away. They complain that things are happening "too soon" but they can't explain how long they think we should wait, just that we need to wait until it's "Safer", whatever that means.

I'm not sure how long it's going to take for them to understand any of this but I wish they would hurry up. Lol

I think the lack of understanding was more common early on - people thought flattening the curve meant stopping the virus and saving lives. Now that they understand that what it really means is slowing down contagion and spreading out the death toll, rather than mitigating it in a significant way, they have collectively decided that it isn't a strategy they support. Because even at the revised, lower fatality estimates, merely flattening the curve and allowing the virus to spread (slowly) would result in 500K to 1M deaths. And since other countries have shown an elimination strategy is possible, a lot of people and leaders here are now seeing that as the more desirable track... but getting there with the virus already as widespread as it is would be akin to paddling up river through raging rapids.

In the end it all boils down to personal choice. If people want to go to the bar or have a party then that's up to them. If someone else doesn't feel comfortable going outside then that's their choice and no one else's to make.

The problem with the personal choice argument is that when you want to go to a bar, you're essentially demanding that the employees of that bar give up their own choice to take the level of protection they're comfortable with in order to give you the experience you desire. And while you may interact with a handful of people while you're in that bar, your waitress has to get up close to every patron in her section for the entirety of her shift, so her exposure and therefore her risk is much greater than yours.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I don’t think many are thinking this, I think more are thinking it’s gone and we can resume like as normal. Healthcare workers deal with patients all day and have a lower risk of infection because they are taking safety measures. Some states that opened up have folks going back to business as usual. The more people who avoid getting Covid until a vaccine or effective treatment is in place, the better. Yes, businesses have to open up, but do we need to pack bars, have parties, protest?

Based on the comments I've seen it's def. the opposite of what you're saying. Many people don't want other people to actually get back out there. Going out to do 'normal' (I say that loosely because we have a different definition of normal now) is met with criticism, skepticism (as in "should you really be doing that") and inferences that you're spreading it by the mere act of doing xyz (nevermind that prior behaviors could have done it as well) and this is why the cases are going up (which isn't necessarily true) and these places (aka pretty much nothing) shouldn't be open now because of xyz even if you use precautions such as washing hands, using hand sanitizer, keeping distance, using masks when distancing not feasible, using heightened safety measures with respects to gatherings, etc. It's this concept that we need to hunker down for some undetermined time period because of xyz.

I've def. watched the perception be quite different depending on who you talk to. I suspect by summer's end we might have more of a middle ground.

On the aspect of protests (peaceful and respectful ones that is) I have zero issues with those when people are abiding by social distancing measures--that may be quite rare but I have seen evidence of it.

 

[ponyboy]

The problem with the personal choice argument is that when you want to go to a bar, you're essentially demanding that the employees of that bar give up their own choice to take the level of protection they're comfortable with in order to give you the experience you desire. And while you may interact with a handful of people while you're in that bar, your waitress has to get up close to every patron in her section for the entirety of her shift, so her exposure and therefore her risk is much greater than yours.

It doesn't work that way. I can no more demand someone show up for work or work at a specific place than they can demand that I stay home. The waitress has just as much choice to work at the bar or not to work at the bar.

 

[disneychrista]

. I can no more demand someone show up for work or work at a specific place than they can demand that I stay home. The waitress has just as much choice to work at the bar or not to work at the bar.

Sorry but that is a BS answer. When you demand that restaurants, bars, etc open and those in power give in you taking the choice away. Under normal circumstances she LOVES her job but not when faced with a potentially deadly pandemic.

 

[ponyboy]

Well, we can look at Germany for what our response could have looked like. Or rather, what our response absolutely *should* have looked like. Being the Greatest most Successful Nation since the dawn of man...and all.

Like Germany, for one, we should have a national response. We didn't have that. We still don't have that. We should have locked down sooner. We should have had enough PPE in place. We should have been testing like crazy, and we should have had a plan in place from the second we locked down....about how we would have opened back up. Germany has a population that is 25% of ours....80 million people. Yet they've had just 10% of the amount of cases when compared to the United States. And just 8% the number of deaths when compared with us. Their leaders stood together and did not blame everyone and everything else. It was a coordinated national response led by a woman, who also happens to be a scientist. That's about as good as it gets for a large Western nation.

Simply "closing the border with China" and then literally doing *nothing*....for the entire month of February, was, in hindsight, not a good way to go.

If we were proactive and not woefully and completely unprepared for this, we'd have 732,000 cases instead of the 1,800,000 we have. And the more heartbreaking number....if we'd been proactive with an actual national response, or, just some sort of....plan.....we'd have roughly 34,000 deaths instead of the 105,000 that we have now.

That's nice and all but the United States isn't Germany. Germany consists of a single government while the United States consists of the federal government and 50 independent state governments. And unlike in Germany the federal government does not have absolute control over the states, which should be obvious by now with the 50 different responses instituted by the state governors. Not to mention about half of our federal government was against closing the borders in the beginning of the pandemic before they decided that we didn't do it fast enough.

The problem all goes back to the number of asymptomatic cases. In February nobody in the world knew the number of carriers that didn't get sick. So while we were busy basically wasting our time contact tracing it was spreading like wildfire behind the scenes. So without convincing 50 different state governors that something was happening that nobody at the time knew was happening there's zero chance at locking everyone down much sooner than what happened.

You're complaining about a national response to something like this and it's just not possible. The president and the federal government just don't have the power to order the states around in order to accomplish something like that. I mean, if you want to really get serious we could be like North Korea and shoot anyone found infected and that would definitely stop some of the spread, but that's not how it works here either.

I'll agree that in hindsight we could have had more PPE and possibly stopped incoming travel sooner. Other than that, the other things you're referencing just isn't really possible here from a national response standpoint.

 

[ponyboy]

Sorry but that is a BS answer. When you demand that restaurants, bars, etc open and those in power give in you taking the choice away. Under normal circumstances she LOVES her job but not when faced with a potentially deadly pandemic.

I'm sorry you think so but it's the truth. If I wanted to stop going to work today then that's my choice. Nobody can force me to go to work. Nobody can force me to work at a certain place. I'm free to find employment somewhere else, should I choose.

People ordering electronics and iphones and TV's on Amazon today are keeping my job running but those people aren't forcing me to work. It's a choice.

 

[dvcgirl67]

That's nice and all but the United States isn't Germany. Germany consists of a single government while the United States consists of the federal government and 50 independent state governments. And unlike in Germany the federal government does not have absolute control over the states, which should be obvious by now with the 50 different responses instituted by the state governors. Not to mention about half of our federal government was against closing the borders in the beginning of the pandemic before they decided that we didn't do it fast enough.

The problem all goes back to the number of asymptomatic cases. In February nobody in the world knew the number of carriers that didn't get sick. So while we were busy basically wasting our time contact tracing it was spreading like wildfire behind the scenes. So without convincing 50 different state governors that something was happening that nobody at the time knew was happening there's zero chance at locking everyone down much sooner than what happened.

You're complaining about a national response to something like this and it's just not possible. The president and the federal government just don't have the power to order the states around in order to accomplish something like that. I mean, if you want to really get serious we could be like North Korea and shoot anyone found infected and that would definitely stop some of the spread, but that's not how it works here either.

I'll agree that in hindsight we could have had more PPE and possibly stopped incoming travel sooner. Other than that, the other things you're referencing just isn't really possible here from a national response standpoint.

Of course it was possible to have a federal response. We had a federal response after the 9/11 attacks. Didn't we? Or did I miss that? What we had here was a beaten down C.D.C...throwing out "suggested guidelines"....if you feel like it....you know maybe. Or maybe go swimming with 700 people in a bathtub in the Ozarks...it's all good! In fact, it's great.

Had the people in charge listened to the smart people....we would not be in the position we're in right now. Problem is....so many of the smart people left government.

Also, you can't have it both ways...."states rights" when the the big guy doesn't want to take the wheel....but "executive orders!!!!" when they don't want the states to take charge. You can't have a government representative/son-in-law claim this to be a "great American success story", but also blame the W.H.O and China, when before they were doing "great". Next they'll blame the band The Who, people who live in WhoVille, Dr. Seuss and the Cat in the Hat. It's all so legit crazy nuts....that I can't keep up.

We have a federal response that is simultaneously "leading" the response....and protesting it at the same time. We live in the Upside Down. And it's awful.

 

[skyblue17]

I'm sorry you think so but it's the truth. If I wanted to stop going to work today then that's my choice. Nobody can force me to go to work. Nobody can force me to work at a certain place. I'm free to find employment somewhere else, should I choose.

People ordering electronics and iphones and TV's on Amazon today are keeping my job running but those people aren't forcing me to work. It's a choice.

It's your choice to not go to work, but that's not a choice everyone can realistically make, especially right now. If a job is deemed essential, but the rest of the household is not working, do you really expect a person to say "actually, I will forfeit my paycheck"? Families still need to be able to pay bills and buy groceries. It's on us to make it as safe as possible for the essential workers, and that means limiting the close contact we have with others outside of the home. Someone blowing off the guidances and going out and socializing with multiple people throughout the week are making that person's risk higher.

 

[disneychrista]

If I wanted to stop going to work today then that's my choice. Nobody can force me to go to work.

True that no one can force you to go to work. But we all have food to buy, rent & bills to pay etc. For most if we don't work then there is no way to pay for those things. Once a person refuses to go back to work they are (technically) no longer qualified for unemployment benefits. So there really isn't much true choice in the matter of working or not.

I've been working through out this whole mess. Thankfully not in a customer forward position but I am still out having to interact with the public on a limited basis. I would much rather stay home in my "bubble" where I feel safe but as I said bills have to be paid, food has to be bought, etc.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Of course it was possible to have a federal response. We had a federal response after the 9/11 attacks. Didn't we?

If you're going to reference 9/11 then know that measures put in place from 9/11 STILL are not completed (and now have been extended by a year) 18+ years after it occurred. And things were not done at a national level within 2-3 months like snapping fingers. Even right after it not all airports were utilizing the same security measures--I should know I flew a month after 9/11 to D.C. of all places, even now airports across the country do not use all the same procedures and they are actually done that way on purpose.

We needed clear, concise, guidelines for all states at a national level but no because of how we are framed in our country (which is a positive and a negative) things could not be applied to all 50 states such that you are talking about; I think that is more or less what the PP was talking about. Even now you have places within a state pleading to be able to make the decision for their citizens as they best see fit versus on a state level. Like it or not (and there's plenty of both sides to look at), we are designed to have things certain ways that make a national effort difficult and it does take time; time in which was not available.

 

[BrokeMack]

I do my part and don't flip out if someone gets too close to me...BUT...yesterday some solicitor came to my door and in addition to being really smug and condescending, he also chose to lean on my door frame about a foot away from my face with his mask off.

 

[adkkev]

I'm sorry you think so but it's the truth. If I wanted to stop going to work today then that's my choice. Nobody can force me to go to work. Nobody can force me to work at a certain place. I'm free to find employment somewhere else, should I choose.

So ... you’re demanding that these various businesses open up and serve you regardless of the potential consequences to the employees or other patrons of those businesses. In other words, those employees are expendable, because as you‘ve said, the herd is going to be culled no matter what. You really don’t care who gets sick, or who gets complications, or who dies ... the most important thing is that these places open up pronto and serve YOU. As long as you’re taken care of, no one else really matters do they?