Machka 

True ... but ...

Flus have been getting worse in recent years. (Yes, I know COVID-19 is not a flu) 2017 in Australia was a really bad year for flu and killed many more people than COVID-19 has done so far. 2015 and 2016 were kind of bad, 2018 wasn't so bad, but 2019 was a bad one again.

Because I have had to attend university with 500 students from all over Asia, and ride the bus 5 days a week, and work in a building that seems to be a hothouse of germs, I've been hit badly by these flus. I've missed weeks of work which isn't too bad because I have ample sick leave, but I've also missed weeks at university which has been problematic at times. It has been a real challenge to get through my courses.

It also means I miss a lot of cycling. I can pretty much guarantee that I'll be off the bicycle in August and September each year when the flu roars through.

But I didn't have to do that in the past! There have been many years in the past where I've had about 5 days of flu and that's it. In some years I haven't been sick at all. Why?

Well ... rather than guessing what might have happened in the past, let's look at 2018. In 2018 I did not get sick. I was horribly sick in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2019 ... but not in 2018. Granted, 2018 wasn't a particularly bad year for flus so that probably helped. And I got a flu shot. That might have helped, but then I also had a flu shot in 2019 and was sick several times. So what was the difference?

Well, in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2019 I attended university with 500 students from all over Asia. But in 2018, I was able to attend university remotely because Rowan had a bad accident and was in hospital and I was there by his side for months. In other words, I socially distanced in 2018. And I wasn't sick that year!

So, while I do think we need to develop some natural immunity, perhaps we're getting overwhelmed by too much disease. Perhaps some social distancing is actually better.

Mobile 155

We can all have our thoughts on "if" a immunity to this virus will ever be developed, Aids and Ebola gives rise to that being doubtful. We may have to rethink stuffing people into one small space as being sustainable. If that very method may have been a major contributor to the spread of a infection how can future generations believe they will not be effected the next time it comes around. It is a bit like living in a flood zone. you may only get a flood every 50 years but if it has been 45 years since the last one people will get nervous.

However the focus of how dense living and dense commuting contributes to this problem is turning a search light onto a possible dissimulator and that just may stick with people for years to come. Who will want to take a bus or the subway if you have to wear a hazmat suit/ (thake that as hyperbole.) https://nypost.com/2020/04/15/mit-st...avirus-in-nyc/

jack pot 

i think the most evident CULTURE CHANGE will come once testing becomes widespread and the numbers of asymptomatic "carriers" are ID'd ... if COVID-19 is like the AIDS etc viruses this can easily lead into various societal segregations directly and indirectly taking place in business educational governmental military AND even in terms with whom one might mate

Rollfast

No problem, hasn't happened since 2000.

cooker

It would be a shame if decisions, both personal and public, were made based on emotion and not analysis. By the time the corona virus runs it's course, we'll be able to look back and see which populations and regions suffered the most. New York seemingly has been hit hard, but the virus will work it's way through all areas of the US and Canada by the time it is done, and I don't know if the urban rates will turn out to any worse than the rural ones. As well, a pandemic is a dramatic, but also very rare event, and the all-cause mortality every year, year after year, in various regions has to be taken into account too. So if people flee cities based on the perception that they are hotspots for highly infectious diseases that occur only once in many decades, and eventually go through all communities, and don't look at day to day causes of death, they may make uninformed ande possibly bad choices.

See also:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...d-19-pandemic/

Mobile 155

we had SARS in 2003, no vaccine. H1N1 2009, no vaccine, Mers 2012, no vaccine. Now we have Civid 19. And the studies are saying the big Urban areas will see it first if it comes back. While researching the subject I found this from the Harvard Medical School, "“There is no proof at this point that the development of an antibody response will be protective,” said David Walt, a professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “There is no evidence yet that people can’t be reinfected with the virus.” I don't believe Buses, subways, Planes and trains will ever be able to operate without serious reconfiguration for spacing. And yes New York was hit hard. Close to Half of all of the deaths in US happened in New York. One city.

But that aside, are you OK, can you work from home?

jack pot 

>>> I'm no gay culture expert but i do know that aids & STDs radically changed socializing in the gay communities and only thru VOLUNTARY sexual quarantining over many years was the AIDS incidence tamped but unlike AIDS Covid insidiously threatens everyone both physically & MENTALLY so i foresee a socio/economic shift in cultural attitudes toward all strangers

cooker

I'm okay, thanks. I had a bit of a scare when I had a sudden, but mild flu-like illness appear out of the blue on March 12 and called in sick to work, and the symptoms lasted 3 weeks but didn't get worse, and are mostly gone now. I was scheduled to do an out-of-town consulting trip the second week I was off and that was cancelled, of course, so I had 2 very light weeks and then ramped up to full-time working from home. While the whole organization started to transition to lots of people working from home, I was actually well ahead of the game, as I have been working two days a week from home for about 2 years, and had all the skills and equipment already, and was able to help other people troubleshoot some of their starting up problems.

It's great not to have to commute, but I am missing out on almost 2 hours of cycling to and from work 3 days a week and only partly making it up with longer dog walking. It's a bit confusing for the dog, as we steer away from people, so she doesn't get to sniff many dog butts!

For a while I was Webexing in to almost daily team meetings and business meetings, but now I am down to two team/business meetings a week and one is mostly social, and the rest is paperwork and video meetings with clients.

I'm on a hybrid model of fixed and billable hours, so March was a partial write-off, but April should be okay, but in any event work is somewhat optional as I could retire if I wanted to. So I am very fortunate not to be hurting badly like so many people.

My biggest stress is that one adult child works for a major grocery chain and is constantly at risk, and a 55 year old male staff at another location of the same chain died of COVID-19, but her site is not affected (so far). Also I am only getting instagram and some two way video access to my 6 month old first grandchild! At least we live in an era when we get that much!

How about you and your family?

Mobile 155

we are ok. We moved to another state just before the big scare hit California. We are closer to our kids so we can see them
more than before.

we have pretty much sheltered in place for about a month. Technology has made social distancing pretty easy. But then I am retired.

I have learned that many of the tasks I used to do myself can be accomplished online. I haven’t been to the grocery store for most of that month either. When we feel like eating out we just have dinner delivered.

Our state has started to open up and I am looking forward to getting out to go fishing and other social activities. I now live about 1/4 mile from a lake.

the interaction with other people is what has changed the most. People just don’t want to be close to other people. I fear this will be the new normal.

350htrr

THE WAY, My, and my wife's life has changed socially is... We have not seen our grand kids for the last 4 weeks... and... while it is working for the moment for such a short time, IN the long run it WILL FAIL!!!... I went for a drive around town today... and... GUESS what, I have seen, hundreds,. And I mean hundreds.. of people in parking lots, "camping/picnicking", cars parked 6' apart… and they were there, because the parks were closed... WOW,,, to me that seems like a loophole to not, socializing , OK, just not at the park where it's illegal.. , but, wait, it's OK at a parking lot... People were sitting in their lawn chairs a foot apart, and their kids were riding their bicycles AROUND, like normally, as kids will do... WOW... NOT social distancing at all... IMO...

that is going to be the new "normal" IMO... F' the law, we want to live life, and who care's about the 2% who will die... Life just needs to go on...

Mobile 155

We don't have the same problem here. Parks aren't closed and small groups will be allowed by Friday I think. We have a soccer field maybe a 100 yards from my front door and every late afternoon there are still small groups of kids with their coaches practicing. Not plays were they are running together or at each other but passing drills where they are about 15 to 20 feet apart and kicking a ball at each other. I walk my dog about three or four times a day. We meet other walkers often and sometimes stop and talk but always about ten feet apart and never a hand shake.

But I just had a friend that is flying back to New York from San Diego to move her daughter's stuff back from college. The plane was almost empty, one person per row and not across from each other with several rows between people. Couldn't have been 18 people on the plane. If this transfers to Trains, Buses and Subways mass transit will never be the same. But the set us free protests are taking place close by anyway.

As I understand it car sales are off but that could be because so many are not working anymore. Urber and Lyft are almost non existent, and when I do get out to pick up prescriptions I see quire a few cars with just one person in them. It is easy to social distance by yourself in your own car I guess. I shouldn't project I guess but to me it looks like the world will change from this.

Leisesturm

Syphilis, Gonorrhea, Herpes, AIDS ... none of these have stopped people from having casual sex. Not even AIDS. Very few people have natural immunity to HIV. LOTS of people have natural immunity to SARS-Cov-2. Chances are GOOD that many of you that are scared of every surface that has not been personally disinfected twice, have already been exposed! You will not die. You will not even become ill. But you are scared to death. Needlessly. I am (gratefully) wearing a mask that a friend made. She sent it to me in the mail with another one for my wife. I put mine on and went food shopping and felt really fine as no one was giving me the stink eye anymore for not wearing a mask. I told another friend about my friends generosity and they were horrified. "You did what?!" "How do you know that mask is safe?!" "OMG!" "You should have washed it first!"

Maybe. If I suddenly stop posting two weeks from now you know why. TBH I wasn't wanting a mask because I am afraid of Covid. I just wanted to be socially acceptable. It's hard for me to imagine that most of us haven't already screwed up any number of times and infected ourselves. But there is (currently) no way to know our immunity status. As I type this 60 companies are furiously on the hunt for a vaccine that they hope will be taken by every one of 350M Americans and 1/3 of the World's population that can afford the pricetag. Does that make sense? Seriously? Vaccinate BILLIONS for a disease that is only dangerous to single digit millions, and deadly to at most a few hundred thousand********** Inefficiency on that scale should be criminal. If there isn't a serious attempt made for people to find out their seroimmunity and thus avoid unnecessarily vaccinating those with natural immunity I will go to law school and become a prosecutor.

BTW, word on the street is that a vaccine in 18mo. is BS!!!!! Not going to happen in under 2 years. 4 years more likely. We should not, in 2020, still be relying on vaccines to fight deadly diseases. We need CURES for the serious things that challenge our lives. The way to get a CURE for Covid (or Cancer) is to treat the pharmaceutical companies like you know who is treating the WHO. Defund them! Pay them 1,000th of MSRP for anything not a cure. Only pay full ticket for a genuine CURE™ when and if they manage to produce one. Making Big Pharma RICH on palliatives and life prolonging cocktail regimens will only get us more of the same.

350htrr

Yea, isn't it AMAZIING that as far as I know, there hasn't been a CURE for anything in the last 40 years... (I'm probably missing some, but generally speaking...) Only drugs that one must take for the rest of one's life, some with side effects almost as bad is what you are taking them for...

Leisesturm

Exacty. I see no acknowledgement of the fact that Big Pharma might FAIL to deliver a vaccine on time as promised. I do see national leaders at the Governor level quite prepared to have indefinite lockdowns lasting years if necessary. Interesting. Anti-quarantine protests are already happening in several cities and civic leaders think they can keep their constituents locked down for possibly years. Hmmmm.

Mobile 155

I tend to agree.


I have been chewing on this for a while. We have for years been told that there is impending doom but if we just follow step A, B, or C we can save the world. In then 60s tune in turn on drop out would be salvation. Nope. Give up your big Detroit Mastodons for small fuel efficient foreign cars and we will save the world. Buy Hybrid Cars and we will save the world.. If we leave the cities and go to the Suburbs we can reduce crime and high housing prices and save the world. If we reverse the Suburban flight and come back to the cities we can save the world. If we pack the most people into buses , trains, planes and subways we can save the world. A pandemic or national disaster will never happen. When it does happen if we just follow steps A, B, C we can save the world. If our ancestors listened to the experts we would have never left the old world. Humans will do what humans do and we will learn to live with what nature deals us or the world will save itself. We have turned to Big Pharma and Government as our gods of the volcano. So far the experts haven't proven to be the prophets we thought they were. And when questioned some will say, well it hasn't come true yet but sooner or later what we do will save the world. ( Rant happens when you don't get a lot of sleep the day before.)

cooker

I'm not sure why you are distinguishing between a vaccine and a "cure". Vaccination is the closest thing to a cure for viruses and if it works, why not use it? Of course, if some other method is discovered that would be great, but that might be more than 2 years away as well, and just like the vaccine, we might need many different ones for many different viruses. Vaccination is actually a largely natural process that capitalizes on the body's own defenses. Prior to vaccination we had innoculation: expose people to the actual virus in a way that you hope won't kill them (eg. by skin scratch instead the usual inhaled or hand to face contact), and if they live they are now immune. The downside is you could spark an epidemic, so when Washington forcibly innoculated the revolutionary army with smallpox, he made everybody do it and kept them all confined until they recovered. When Jenner proved that innoculation with the less dangerous vaccinia (cowpox) virus conferred immunity to smallpox (vaccinia innoculation = vaccination), it sparked an infectious disease revolution where injecting a weak or dead virus stimulates protection against a "viru"-lent virus. This is still the best, (and more or less "natural"), approach to virus protection because it enlists the body's own resources instead of exposing you to drugs, and it confers long-lasting and in some cases permanent protection.

And who know if and when some "cure" would even be found. Existing anti-viral drugs like Valtrex and Tamiflu are pretty weak, and only help if taken very early on and aren't broad spectrum. Waiting til you get sick and taking a drug that only helps a little bit seems a lot less appealing than taking a highly effective preventive measure.

Leisesturm

What if when you broke your collarbone in a bike accident the response was to remove the dead squirrel that you hit so no one else would hit it and go down?! Would that satisfy you? A vaccine is something you give a healthy person so they don't get sick. What if you are one of the sick ones? What about YOU? How long do we accept Middle Ages responses to disease? I am not holding my breath for a Covid vaccine. I personally don't think they can do it. They are going to absorb all the venture capital and investor buy in that they can absorb and by the time we realize it was all just a pipe dream we will have figured out how to live with the virus just like we live with all the other viruses that they haven't made vaccines for. Flu virus efficacy is as low as 45% some years. This is after DECADES of ongoing R&D. Getting to a working virus for something completely new like COVID will take years. Years and years. If ever. Eventually after the shock wears off we will realize that, compared to other things, Covid-19 is no better or worse.

cooker

Ideally, for highly contagious diseases, we want to be able both to treat people who have the disease, and prevent it for others where we know there is imminent risk of them getting it. Infectious disease, immunology, epidemiology and public health experts are going to have to tell us the best way(s) to do it. So far, viruses have often proved susceptible to vaccines, and not so much to pharmacotherapy. There hasn't been a vaccine for any corona viruses, but partly that reflects their multiple strains and usually mild risk so that it hasn't been a priority. Now, developing a vaccine for this particularly nasty strain seems like a good idea. If we can also find an effective treatment for those who are already infected, so much the better.

alloo

People want to live in cities. More people live in cities than the suburb. Freeway commuting forces you to buy a car. You're essentially stuck in a cage for hours. More freeways results in more congestion. Your cage forces you to be stuck in a financial cage. Your money goes to fuel, tune ups, tires, brakes, insurance and a car payment. Your cage separates you from nature and other people. Living in the suburbs cause you to be obese and less healthy because you drive everywhere. Look at the US from 1970 - the present, we have gotten fatter and more unhealthy. When you can't or won't bike or walk anywhere, you have to join a fitness club instead of living a healthy lifestyle.

Mobile 155

I believe you will find that a political belief not a statistical truth. Many urban centers are called metropolitan to try and increase their tax base. In reality the Suburbs dominate the area. I am not a big fan of city lab but they are pretty open minded to the reality of where people live. I don't believe when this is over it will get better for urban living without some major changes in density standards. For your reading enjoyment and consideration. https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/11...burban/575602/

Mobile 155

Just to add to my contention about a cultural change it comes from our trust of our institutions and services. Before Covid 19 a restaurant with a C rating was clearly not a clean place to eat. Even when such a place was sold and new management took over local people tended to avoid such places for a long time. When my sister drove for OCTD later called OCTA whenever they had a strike that lasted more than a few days ridership went down and stayed down for as much as a year. It has always been a advantage of personal private transportation that it was available when you wanted simply by walking to the vehicle and going where you want when you want. I did see some inroads made over the last few years by companies like Uber and Lyft. Even to a degree light rail was on the rise. But for many people those forms of transportation have become suspect and they are not as simple as walking to the vehicle and going where you want. Not when fuel is so inexpensive. As an example. The other day I decided while having to stay home anyway it might be a good time to get my car into the shop and have a complete top to bottom servicing done. I even had to people at the garage come pick up my car, inspect it and send me an estimate on line. Not having a car for two days didn't bother me I figured I could always call Uber if I had to be somewhere. Oh but that was a mistake. Uber and Lyft are not a go to source anymore. In fact people are simply not driving for them as much. And if they were losing money before I can only imagine what it is like now. I will remember this when the recovery takes place. But my trials were slight and seemed to be something everyone is seeing. https://www.businessinsider.com/how-...ion-measures-1 Just an observation that drives part of my contention.

FiftySix

I'd say that's just part of it, but suburbs have been around for decades before America as a whole got overweight. Other factors I believe are:


- Replacing sports or outdoor play with the internet activity or electronic gaming.


- Countries like the USA have more restaurants than ever before and have more discretionary income to spend on that food. Plus, fast food can often be had for less money or effort than it costs to cook at home.

https://www.vox.com/2016/8/31/123682...ca-2018-charts


- Physically taxing jobs have been on the decline.

https://www.healthline.com/health-ne...king-you-fat#1

https://www.publichealth.org/public-awareness/obesity/

cooker

It's an interesting paradox that I have commented on before. Real estate prices are way higher in the city (in many cases), suggesting as alloo says, that more people want to live in the city, yet we build more suburbs than "'urbs". You'd think the marketplace would respond to the demand by building more urban style development, and yet it doesn't or at least not enough. I believe there are market-distorting factors at work such that a lot of Americans aren't actually getting what they want.

One of those factors of course is zoning. People in the inner suburbs strongly resist urbanization taking over their neighbourhoods with low rise (or high rise) infill development. So the "urban centre" can't expand, and there just isn't enough of it for all the people who want it, causing prices to go ever higher

Mobile 155

Agreed again. There were suburbs of Rome before Christ. But you may have hit on a point where hard manual labor has declined more than we as a nation realize. And yes, eating out has proven to be very easy. Last night my wife wanted Chick Fil A rather than cooking and so that is what we had.

Still there is no great advantage to families health wise to live in large Urban centers and from a crime and now pandemic point of view there are some set backs. And while there was a period of time when there was a return to the city movement it seems to have passed and the suburbs are growing again. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018...l-communities/

I don't know if these trends will continue after things recover but I do know the Restrictions in cities like Dallas, LA, Seattle, Portland, New York and Chicago are way more than in the Suburbs east of DFW. I have nothing against DFW and go there if we need to visit Presbyterian Hospital for a specialist. Still there is a natural social distancing outside of the large Urban centers that are hard to duplicate in those major cities. I would predict we will see a pattern just like the one we just saw if this happens again this winter. In fact in any future pandemic I predict the same hot-spots we see today will be hot spots then. That is why I believe we are going to see a culture change towards tightly packed communities from this day forward.

Machka 

@cooker ... I wonder if any of those 5-year predictions in that thread you used to have talked about this!