The Atlantic tries to churn moral panic 24/7, and now they are trying to also churn anti-moral panic?
Stop getting science advice from op-ed magazines! I sympathize with 100% of the Atlantic's political views and completely hate their desperate and misguided attempts to remain relevant.
The author of this piece, Zeynep Tufekci (https://twitter.com/zeynep), has had a pretty consistent viewpoint throughout the epidemic: she called for early response, early mask wearing (when most western authorities were advising against it) and co-authored a review on the topic (https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202004.0203/v1), and has consistently said that closing outdoor public spaces is a mistake. Whether she's wrong or right, she's not just writing what the Atlantic's editors tell her to.
The problem is all those people ALSO go somewhere else AFTER the beach.
Do they need to go to the bathroom? Do they all need gasoline for their cars? Snacks to go home? Are they all overloading the stores on the way out? Do they need to hit an ATM?
THAT'S where all the spread will occur. Especially amongst a bunch of entitled dipshits who also don't believe in wearing masks or washing hands.
Only if people plan ahead and make some attempt to help contain the disease (wearing masks, limiting non-essential indoor stops, social distancing), which it's now been proven we can't rely on (at least in the US).
Unfortunately the people who feel most comfortable leaving the house are the people who are least likely to take precautions, which seems like a recipe for lots of super spreaders to me.
For everybody who drives to the beach (the vast majority of beachgoers), empirical evidence from California beaches suggests that the answers to all those questions is "yes".
If you want to open the beaches only to those who can walk or bike to them, sure that's probably okay. Now, how do you enforce that?
So, we're back to simply closing the beaches completely because it keeps the idiots at bay and is easy to enforce.
Would be ok if everyone was wearing a mask. You go to the bathroom, cough cough, you go to the restaurant, cough cough, and you're driving back home with your friends in the car, cough cough. If we tried to reduce infection during these occasions, there maybe wasn't even a need for much lock-down.
Germany is about to get rid of wearing masks in stores. That's like turning off the firewall because the attack is over. It's preventive, so you need to wear a mask before sth happens.
I'd be very happy if there was an experiment, just for 4 weeks everybody should wear the damn mask both in private and public, and see what happens.
How can so many people fail to grasp the concept of prevention?
Wow, we’re really caught up in yelling at each other. Seems convenient for the people in charge of our response over the past six months and the organizations that have spent decades preparing for pandemics.
I didn't mean to yell - I'm simply astonished. A mask costs like 0.15€ or 0.17$ (based on Taiwans price with overall comparable price levels in Germany). Two masks a week, that cost is next to nothing.
I think the response in Germany is quite good compared to many others.
My main issue is: we compromise on having some infections and deaths, rather than compromising on wearing a mask.
What are you talking about? Everyone wears a mask in Germany in closed spaces and public transport. I haven't seen a single person not do it and it's already part of daily life. I don't understand the point here?
I don't think this will happen, I also HOPE it won't happen too soon, in Bayern we still have restrictions on number of people that are allowed to meet. Austria got rid of masks almost everywhere, but you still need to wear them in public transport and pharmacies, so I'm pretty sure they will be with us for a while.
> Germany is about to get rid of wearing masks in stores. That's like turning off the firewall because the attack is over. It's preventive, so you need to wear a mask before sth happens.
There were 140 new cases in Germany yesterday in a country of 83 million. In my city of 3,5 million there were 17 new cases. At what point would you say it's safe to not wear a mask in stores?
Flattening the curve was the most immediate and important goal, because overloaded hospitals kill a _lot_ of people.
Herd immunity by everyone getting infected should _not_ be a goal. That's still going to kill many, many people.
The estimate for the US by that route was around 2.5million dead. You could probably scale that by population size and maybe reduce a bit as we get better at treatment for this disease, but that's still a big number.
I don't think we have much option other than to prevent the spread as much as we can while waiting for something like a vaccine and/or far better treatments than we currently have.
Zero cases globally will indeed be a while, if it ever happens.
The issue with herd immunity are the unknown long term risks. Just imagine this stuff wrecks your immune system a couple of months after infection. Or, that immunity goes away after some months.
There's no guarantee that herd immunity helps. On the other hand, we could be working all hands on deck to arrange our lifestyle AND protect from infection.
Being at the beach does not seem to be much of a threat, but going to the beach is a different story. Cramped, less than sanitary public restrooms, crowded food stands, parking kiosks that rarely get cleaned- this all adds up to lots of contact. Sweat is an interesting substrate which doesn’t get a lot of airtime, as are shared beverage containers.
There are worse things than going to the beach, but when hundreds of thousands of people go to them at once, things most certainly get transmitted. I shudder to think how much gets transmitted at Venice Beach on a normal day, let alone in a pandemic.
At this point, don't we have quite a few examples of a lot of people getting infected in one place? Can't such outbreaks be categorized and summarized to get an overall perspective on where it's really hazardous?
My impression is that such events have been places like bars, restaurants, meat packing plants, and nursing homes, and not outdoors, but I haven't seen an article or study on it.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 91.4 ms ] threadStop getting science advice from op-ed magazines! I sympathize with 100% of the Atlantic's political views and completely hate their desperate and misguided attempts to remain relevant.
The business of op-ed and analysis pieces is pretty crappy, and it does not require any moral or intellectual honesty from the authors.
Do they need to go to the bathroom? Do they all need gasoline for their cars? Snacks to go home? Are they all overloading the stores on the way out? Do they need to hit an ATM?
THAT'S where all the spread will occur. Especially amongst a bunch of entitled dipshits who also don't believe in wearing masks or washing hands.
Unfortunately the people who feel most comfortable leaving the house are the people who are least likely to take precautions, which seems like a recipe for lots of super spreaders to me.
For everybody who drives to the beach (the vast majority of beachgoers), empirical evidence from California beaches suggests that the answers to all those questions is "yes".
If you want to open the beaches only to those who can walk or bike to them, sure that's probably okay. Now, how do you enforce that?
So, we're back to simply closing the beaches completely because it keeps the idiots at bay and is easy to enforce.
Germany is about to get rid of wearing masks in stores. That's like turning off the firewall because the attack is over. It's preventive, so you need to wear a mask before sth happens.
I'd be very happy if there was an experiment, just for 4 weeks everybody should wear the damn mask both in private and public, and see what happens.
How can so many people fail to grasp the concept of prevention?
I think the response in Germany is quite good compared to many others.
My main issue is: we compromise on having some infections and deaths, rather than compromising on wearing a mask.
There were 140 new cases in Germany yesterday in a country of 83 million. In my city of 3,5 million there were 17 new cases. At what point would you say it's safe to not wear a mask in stores?
We've seen that local outbreaks happen, and that local authorities hesitate to take action.
I don't understand this question at all. As long a there's >=1 case and little immunity the virus WILL spread.
No one estimates a vaccine any time remotely soon and even with one it would take years at best to achieve zero cases globally.
No, suppression was the goal. At least, the study that turned the tide on policy concluded that targeting suppression was essential.
Herd immunity by everyone getting infected should _not_ be a goal. That's still going to kill many, many people.
The estimate for the US by that route was around 2.5million dead. You could probably scale that by population size and maybe reduce a bit as we get better at treatment for this disease, but that's still a big number.
I don't think we have much option other than to prevent the spread as much as we can while waiting for something like a vaccine and/or far better treatments than we currently have.
Zero cases globally will indeed be a while, if it ever happens.
Hope is not a strategy. You have presented no way to do testing and tracing in the US.
There's no guarantee that herd immunity helps. On the other hand, we could be working all hands on deck to arrange our lifestyle AND protect from infection.
ridiculous huh
There are worse things than going to the beach, but when hundreds of thousands of people go to them at once, things most certainly get transmitted. I shudder to think how much gets transmitted at Venice Beach on a normal day, let alone in a pandemic.
My impression is that such events have been places like bars, restaurants, meat packing plants, and nursing homes, and not outdoors, but I haven't seen an article or study on it.