If Current DCI Model Gets Cut Back...

[Jurassic Lancer]

15 hours ago, N.E. Brigand said:

But it's not false or disingenuous at all. It's what would happen if business as usual went on. And yes, some people were advising just that. Herd immunity!

I quoted a DCP poster who said that it was ridiculous that all "sporting and entertainment events [were] cancelled, [and] schools [were] closed" in response to COVID19.

That person's reasoning? Swine Flu killed 12,000 Americans *over the course of a year* and we didn't do those things. (Though there were some very limited small-scale closures.)

And that was before stay-at-home orders were issued in most places. That person wasn't responding to those measures but was complaining that even just shutting down events and schools was too much -- apparently even if they were to save as many as 12,000 lives.

Now we've seen COVID19 has killed more than 30,000 Americans in 47 days, and we're on our way to reach twice that number. (The past 24 hours have the most deaths yet. Also, while New York has finally done the right thing and started to record *some* of the large number of people, vastly exceeding the daily average of the past five years, who died at home but were never tested, most jurisdictions still are not doing this, so the real death count still exceeds the official count by a fair bit. And yes, comparisons like that are the way that these things are normally counted. That Swine Flu count was calculated after the fact by comparing to previous years' averages, not by counting each death that had tested positive in real time.) Some hospitals are right at their breaking points. Bodies are piling up in spare rooms. (Seriously. I can provide pictures if necessary.) A fair number of doctors and nurses have fallen ill or died. (Not something that normally happens because of the flu!) They're wearing garbage bags because they ran out of protective equipment. But in the hardest-hit jurisdictions, so far, we seem to have done *just barely enough* to avoid cause health care collapses. One recently discovered fact helped: ventilators are less helpful than had been believed. (They're still needed, just not as much as expected.) People whose blood oxygen levels have dropped so low that all the books and training says they ought to be on ventilators are often better off without, because of the weird way this strange virus acts in the lungs.

But again: we're going to have five times as many deaths from this outbreak, in one-fourth the time, as we did for Swine Flu.

And those are 60,000 souls *on top of* those who died from the flu this year. The one disease didn't replace the other.

And all of that happened even though we imposed extensive social distancing measures. It would be so much worse if we hadn't!

This is just baffling: when some people here claimed that COVID19 was being overhyped ("get back to me in two or three weeks", said someone here in the last week of February) because the swine flu was worse, or the regular flu season (in which 60,000 deaths is a bad year) is worse, even though both of those claims have proved to be false, that wasn't worth disputing. But when other people here warned that it was going to be much worse, and then when they noted that subsequent events bore those predictions out, that's somehow misleading.

That burgundy line on the chart is what would happen had we done nothing. (Which would lead to somewhere between 500,000 and 2 million Americans dead, by the way. Yes, that's a big uncertain spread, because there's lots we just don't know about this virus yet.)

That "efforts start working" point on the chart? If we're lucky, that's where we are right now, in terms of the death toll. Or we may be just a bit to the right, just past that inflection point. What you seem to be proposing is that the efforts taken to this point weren't worthwhile, because once we reached this point, we could now take all the measures that are helping us bend the curve. Or alternatively you seem to believe that people would have taken sufficient steps on their own to match the official policies, and those would have been good enough to get us here.

If that's what you mean, I don't think it's true. Had we taken the social distancing steps we did take just *one week earlier*, we probably could have cut the death toll by half. And that obviously didn't happen, whether officially or not.

What are those 30,000 American lives worth?

We probably ought to decide, because it needs to be a factor in how and when we reopen (and thus ultimately how 2021 plays out for DCI).

Standing-O!

EDIT: I have retracted the rest of this reply. Upon reflection, I was too aggressive. Apologies all around.

Edited April 16, 2020 by Jurassic Lancer

[N.E. Brigand]

1 hour ago, Ghost said:

Is this from the great 7 Samurai movie?

Same director, Akira Kurosawa, but that image is from his 1965 film, Red Beard.

(Toshiro Mifune, the actor in the middle, who plays the title character, was also in Seven Samurai and about a dozen other Kurosawa films.)

And it's a pretty misleading image, because that's really the only action scene in a three-hour, mostly quiet drama.

But I think another quiet scene from that movie is the single greatest thing ever put on film.

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Speaking of visuals and samurai, as I've said before: Cavaliers' 2008 show is my favorite all-time visual design.

Edited April 16, 2020 by N.E. Brigand

[Fred Windish]

22 hours ago, Jurassic Lancer said:

Standing-O! I defy anyone one here to rebut this. I have literal skin in the game. Not money-literal skin. Real skin. 
 

And if you do rebut this, I hope you will have the balls to tell me face to face at Finals, if there ever is another Finals.

.

Edited April 17, 2020 by Fred Windish

[Brian Tuma]

2 hours ago, Fred Windish said:

Please show better control. Threatening other posters who might converse with you is taking this too far. Not me, Pal. If you see me at another event you will get a reasonable rebuttal.  This is not the best place to strike fear in others.

I fail to see the threat. There’s no “or else”.

And if you do rebut this, I hope you will have the balls to tell me face to face at Finals, if there ever is another Finals.

 

[LabMaster]

2 hours ago, Fred Windish said:

Please show better control. Threatening other posters who might converse with you is taking this too far. Not me, Pal. If you see me at another event you will get a reasonable rebuttal.  This is not the best place to strike fear in others.

Maybe there is a point being made that instead of hiding in DCP anonymity, you step up with your response directly, without anonymity.  I don’t feel the fear being struck as no one could strike that much fear in me, using just words.

[Cappybara]

20 hours ago, HockeyDad said:

A little over the top on that reaction Cappy. According to IHME website that everyone uses, peak hospital bed demand was five days ago and peak death per day was two days ago. Gar said early April. Not sure that was terribly or irresponsibly wrong. Also I’m pretty sure the decision makers around the country weren’t relying on Gar’s post on DCP to drive their decisions. Geeze this thread drove into a political ditch pretty fast. 

Not quite sure what was political about my post, please enlighten me. 
 

The spreading of misinformation, intentionally or not, is dangerous. People are gullible. Maybe one post won’t convince someone but as you browse online and see more and more posts on social media saying “we’re almost in the clear!”, people get complacent. See the image the NE Brigand posted which very perfectly illustrates my point 

[Cappybara]

11 hours ago, N.E. Brigand said:

But it's not false or disingenuous at all. It's what would happen if business as usual went on. And yes, some people were advising just that. Herd immunity!

I quoted a DCP poster who said that it was ridiculous that all "sporting and entertainment events [were] cancelled, [and] schools [were] closed" in response to COVID19.

That person's reasoning? Swine Flu killed 12,000 Americans *over the course of a year* and we didn't do those things. (Though there were some very limited small-scale closures.)

And that was before stay-at-home orders were issued in most places. That person wasn't responding to those measures but was complaining that even just shutting down events and schools was too much -- apparently even if they were to save as many as 12,000 lives.

Now we've seen COVID19 has killed more than 30,000 Americans in 47 days, and we're on our way to reach twice that number. (The past 24 hours have the most deaths yet. Also, while New York has finally done the right thing and started to record *some* of the large number of people, vastly exceeding the daily average of the past five years, who died at home but were never tested, most jurisdictions still are not doing this, so the real death count still exceeds the official count by a fair bit. And yes, comparisons like that are the way that these things are normally counted. That Swine Flu count was calculated after the fact by comparing to previous years' averages, not by counting each death that had tested positive in real time.) Some hospitals are right at their breaking points. Bodies are piling up in spare rooms. (Seriously. I can provide pictures if necessary.) A fair number of doctors and nurses have fallen ill or died. (Not something that normally happens because of the flu!) They're wearing garbage bags because they ran out of protective equipment. But in the hardest-hit jurisdictions, so far, we seem to have done *just barely enough* to avoid cause health care collapses. One recently discovered fact helped: ventilators are less helpful than had been believed. (They're still needed, just not as much as expected.) People whose blood oxygen levels have dropped so low that all the books and training says they ought to be on ventilators are often better off without, because of the weird way this strange virus acts in the lungs.

But again: we're going to have five times as many deaths from this outbreak, in one-fourth the time, as we did for Swine Flu.

And those are 60,000 souls *on top of* those who died from the flu this year. The one disease didn't replace the other.

And all of that happened even though we imposed extensive social distancing measures. It would be so much worse if we hadn't!

This is just baffling: when some people here claimed that COVID19 was being overhyped ("get back to me in two or three weeks", said someone here in the last week of February) because the swine flu was worse, or the regular flu season (in which 60,000 deaths is a bad year) is worse, even though both of those claims have proved to be false, that wasn't worth disputing. But when other people here warned that it was going to be much worse, and then when they noted that subsequent events bore those predictions out, that's somehow misleading.

That burgundy line on the chart is what would happen had we done nothing. (Which would lead to somewhere between 500,000 and 2 million Americans dead, by the way. Yes, that's a big uncertain spread, because there's lots we just don't know about this virus yet.)

That "efforts start working" point on the chart? If we're lucky, that's where we are right now, in terms of the death toll. Or we may be just a bit to the right, just past that inflection point. What you seem to be proposing is that the efforts taken to this point weren't worthwhile, because once we reached this point, we could now take all the measures that are helping us bend the curve. Or alternatively you seem to believe that people would have taken sufficient steps on their own to match the official policies, and those would have been good enough to get us here.

If that's what you mean, I don't think it's true. Had we taken the social distancing steps we did take just *one week earlier*, we probably could have cut the death toll by half. And that obviously didn't happen, whether officially or not.

What are those 30,000 American lives worth?

We probably ought to decide, because it needs to be a factor in how and when we reopen (and thus ultimately how 2021 plays out for DCI).

Beautifully said. 

[Cappybara]

3 hours ago, Fred Windish said:

Please show better control. Threatening other posters who might converse with you is taking this too far. Not me, Pal. If you see me at another event you will get a reasonable rebuttal.  This is not the best place to strike fear in others.

[JimF-LowBari]

22 minutes ago, Cappybara said:

Not quite sure what was political about my post, please enlighten me. 
 

The spreading of misinformation, intentionally or not, is dangerous. People are gullible. Maybe one post won’t convince someone but as you browse online and see more and more posts on social media saying “we’re almost in the clear!”, people get complacent. See the image the NE Brigand posted which very perfectly illustrates my point 

Plus I thought we had more deaths in the last two days than ever before. And new hot spots cropping up. As for “almost in the clear” let’s cherry pick my home state (PA) our max cases in a day was 1900+. Were down... down to 1100+ each of the last two days. No way almost in the clear. 
On topic: DCI and corps have to be real careful that they don’t think better means things are ok

[IllianaLancerContra]

20 hours ago, N.E. Brigand said:

I've already noted above that garfield's prediction might well have been correct about the national peak being in April.

But right now, as I type this at 1:45 p.m. (EDT) on Apr. 15, the page you're citing says this at the top: "Last updated April 13, 2020". That was two days ago. The day with the most U.S. COVID19 deaths so far was yesterday, Apr. 14. In other words, we just don't know yet.

And we really don't know whether the country will be in a position a month from now that would have allowed DCI to have a season.

Also, let me say once more that garfield wasn't trying to mislead anyone! Nor was anyone else who presented a relatively cheery view of how this outbreak would play out.

For example, here's a post someone else made on March 14. I have changed two words to make sure it's not political:

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Conspiracy theories are based on speculation. The idea that the MSM has an agenda and will stop at nothing to further that agenda and achieve their goal is a widely accepted fact. Heck, they don't even try to hide or dispute it. It is right their on display in plain sight every day and night.

H1N1 Swine flu, 10 years ago, 12,000 deaths, 300,000 hospitalized, 60 million infected. Nothing cancelled, no one cared, [authorities were] praised for the way this was handled. 

COVID 19, 41 deaths, 1500 infected with minimal hospitalizations, 125K infected. All sporting and entertainment events cancelled, schools closed.  Widespread hysteria, panic and paranoia. Stores shelves are empty,"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I've omitted the person's name (as you know, it's not you) to spare them the embarrassment of their words being confronted by reality. They just didn't know what was coming, even if the epidemiologists whose guidance led to the shut-down orders being mocked did know. This person made an honest mistake.

But a potentially dangerous mistake too, if anyone here believed what that person (and others making similar arguments) wrote and didn't take steps in their lives to minimize contact with others. (I am reminded of an ironic story I read the other day. There was a judge in one state who last month mocked a lawyer who asked the judge to take steps to protect people in the courtroom from COVID19. That judge has since contracted and died of the disease. I do not wish that fate on this DCP contributor or anyone!)

And the danger was compounded by not only claiming that was there nothing to worry about in comparison to the 2009-10 H1N1 Swine Flu, which killed 12,000 but didn't shut down the economy, but making the further claim that there was a campaign to deliberately lie to us to make COVID19 seem worse that it was. The message was: Those people advising you to protect yourself? Don't trust them!

Here we are just 30 days later, with more than twice as many Americans dead just in the time since that post was made as died in the entire first year of the H1N1 Swine Flu outbreak, and my message is this: Those people who were advising you not to worry? They meant well, but don't trust them!

So Brass is the brown/red line (soloists are purple), while the green is the Guard.  Drums are in the blue box. The tan are the featured Guard performers.