igor67

While there may be some differences, fundamentally public health has been doing contract tracing for decades. HIV and tuberculosis being of the most common. I think most people would find HIV contract tracing far more invasive given that they are only concerned (for the most part) with sexual contact. The pervasive difficult to escape if you want to use modern technology tracking by private parties is much newer.

'Professor Lockdown's' discussion was much more then just Sweden controlled it just fine (which is highly debatable at the moment). The article was also from the Daily Mail, which has a poor enough reputation for wiki to ban them as an unreliable source.

I honestly find it more than a little disturbing that the stock market is basically right back where it was

Evolving to be less lethal is certainly plausible, even predictable. However barring something more concrete as evidence that's happened I'd withhold judgement. The style of the article and the quotes don't fill me with optimism to be honest. It sounds more like a heavy slant piece instead of an interview with a researcher.

Moving to a purely qualitative mode I do think the general covid stress is the difference here in the Twin Cities between the riots we are seeing now in response to the police shooting, and previous demonstrations. It is a one off type of event, so it is not ever going be amenable to a hardcore quantitative analysis. The number of stores that closed early today was surprising in its own way.

Here is also some related data. New York Times and Washington Post also have articles of their own, but are pay https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.02.20051532v3.full.pdf+html I would certainly agree that any current analysis would be subject to revision as the data quality improves. If your only interested in a rough idea that is probably doable.

Reliably demonstrating individual events to lockdown or general covid fear/anxiety is going to be difficult at best, but I do imagine if we care to know that at the end it will be possible to get reasonable estimates of the impact statistically. Ultimate economic comparisons will likely be trickier, but globalization at a minimum meant everyone else's suffering was going to impact us as well. At a minimum you would still have to add the impact from cancelling all large public events, and account for people's natural reluctance to go to places like restaurants. For some comparison on how Sweden is not being spared the economic drain: https://www.wsj.com/articles/sweden-has-avoided-a-coronavirus-lockdown-its-economy-is-hurting-anyway-11588870062 https://www.ft.com/content/93105160-dcb4-4721-9e58-a7b262cd4b6e

The pattern of spread in covid heavily favors superspreader type events. That has emerged as reasonably consistent everywhere. So it is absolutely trying to over fit the data to attribute a few hundred deaths difference between the two states to how nursing homes are managed. A couple of events can chew up that difference very quickly. You typed IFR when the CDC released CFR guidance. Here is some significant questioning of how those numbers got reported. Normally I would not cite twitter, but Bergstrom is well respected. Importantly one only has to look at the existing raw numbers of 1.6 million cases reported to 96,000 deaths (both rounded in favor of a lower estimate) and you get 6.4% currently. You can also currently work backwards from the number of deaths at 96,000 and divide by 0.004 and discover that would require 24 million Americans to have had Covid already compared to 1.6 reported. Your lower number would put that very close to 50 million Americans. The only place I have seen some kind of testing indicate that prevalence was antibodies in New York. It's been clear for 2 months you've been determined to undersell the significance of the deaths for some reason. As with most things the estimates will change and adjust but your shorthand estimate to get to they were all going to die soon anyway is way at odds with a more thorough analysis here. https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75 Which puts the total over 10 years. The early economic data on early to reopen states hasn't been terribly exciting either. This may also change or perhaps consistent with the somewhat most comparable event the 1918 epidemic people are going to continue to be very cautious and reserved until it is gone. Sweden's grand experiment in promoting herd immunity afterall seems to have hit a big snag with barely 7% showing up in antibody testing https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/21/just-7-per-cent-of-stockholm-had-covid-19-antibodies-by-end-of-april-study-sweden-coronavirus

I didn't watch the other states as closely, but WI and MN started almost numerically equal and for awhile WI trended modestly worse. Its an interesting illustration of how chance can play an amplified effect with potential exponential growth.

Not intended as an insult, more of an example of the importance of structural factors in education.

In fairness I had an education prof from Georgia who pointed out that they didn't start requiring a college degree to teach until the 1980's. It's crazy enough I wish I could source it. Unfortunately that type of structural difference takes years to correct. Extrapolating from experience and literature in the best case probably a full 2 generations.

I would certainly agree that single day death rates are not super informative at this point. All of the measures though risk incomplete pictures taken in isolation. # positive cases is helpful for early detection of spikes, but only with some level of adjustment for increased testing rates. Ideally various improvements in disease management might start to decrease the lethality somewhat, so death rates and percentages are helpful in that regard. ICU hospitalization rates are kind of a mid time point, but also help keep track of resource usage. Even though the final numbers spit out by the Washington model is not terribly good because their methodology doesn't really incorporate biology tracking how their model is trending in some ways is a handy way of seeing how the data fits together. Certainly if you paired that with trends in a few other true epidemiological models you could get a more robust idea of how things are moving. That is quite a bit of work though.

I think I can stomach it if we can at least do some kind of hybrid in person/ online. All online to start the year though.. Makes me just want to stick my head and the sand and hope it all goes away.

Gah, terribly sorry FVbrewerfan. It was Chorizo. Like I said fast moving thread..

Fast moving thread so catching up. 1) Thank you Machu Peach for the insight. My intent was to use the word 'effectiveness' in a general sense as a stand-in for the number of people who mount a full robust long term immune response. I believe my original understanding of this comes from the Respectful Insolence blog, but it's been about 10 years since I put together my lessons on anti-vax so I can't source it 100%. 2) Chorizo, claiming that lawmakers at any level should not work on legislation and bills when not in power is a complete violation of their oaths and jobs. You draft bills and plans and try and build support for them. Especially for something like this you force the veto and the discussion that goes with it to actually provide real alternatives for the public to discuss. It is hard work to develop good policy, but that is ultimately the point of government at every level. Every other philosophy people come up with after that is discardable in the face of "but does it work?" And yes I understand this has never been completely true in terms of how people reason, but willful abandonment of getting policy that actually works should just not be acceptable at all. 3) Which leads into this point I will assume you are just unaware the casually stating scientists/physicians intentionally cooked their numbers to get a predetermined political result is at best blatantly offensive. As has been stated elsewhere mistakes happen all the time it's why open and vigorous critique is so critical to actual progress. Even getting subtly influenced by funding sources can bias results in sneaky ways. But straight-up data manipulation to a predetermined outcome is unforgivable (my view), the nature and circumstances cause actual penalties to vary widely but loss of grants (which often then means your job is toast) is pretty common. Many times it flat out (as it should) ends the persons career permanently. At a minimum loss of credibility is a huge impact as word gets around. I don't know for a physician what the impact on their license might be. Though the infamous Dr. Andrew Wakefield lost his license in England for ethical violations of research standards. I recognize there is not a simple logical train of thought from #2 to #3, but it comes down to this loss of awareness and faith that public servants or all types are trying to act in the public good and with a variety of ethical requirements is corrosive to society. 4) Home Depot, bars etc. My starting point for this one is to recognize that a population of 330 million means you need 330 million different solutions. That is the rational way of understanding why government can't solve all problems. It is also true particularly for a problem like a pandemic that the actions of others impacts your risk. This is a big part of why good policy is hard, the more specific and tailored the longer it takes to develop. It also becomes harder to communicate out (well as you can clearly see on page 597 of the bill shopping in sauk county for business on the even side of the street will be MW and every other Friday save for the essential business identified....) From a government standpoint compliance is something they are aware for healthcare professionals understanding compliance rates is crucial to effective treatment. So a overly general solution has draw backs as well. All of this seems to be impacting perception. I ended up at a Menards on a day the parking lot was completely full, yet between the masks and flow inside the store maintaining distance was not a struggle. I tried to support a local bar (they have really good food) that was doing takeout some weeks ago and was way more dangerous. The orders were way behind so people ended waiting inside to the point the place was half full, I was the only person with a mask. I don't have any idea how to handle that level of variability in a policy. It does seem to be the case though that restaurants are more dangerous both because for eat in you have to remove the mask and the stationary confined space allows more droplets to accumulate and spread compared to walking through a store where you movement cuts down on any one place becoming highly infectious (it is still possible.)

Nothing was stopping them from designing and passing bills. Even the court rejected extending the order a few days saying they had plenty of time to work on alternatives.

I haven't worked directly with any vaccine development, so I maybe unaware of side effects that have scuttled more recent vaccines, but generally the issue is efficacy and strength of the immune response not safety. Vaccines are very well understood in terms of additives and extraordinarily safe. The typical 'bad reaction' is swelling pain and a mild fever. There are some exceedingly rare more severe reactions that can happen, but they are on par with the exceedingly small goofy chance of having a serious complication from any kind of disease (even a cold!). So I would be pretty confident that even a rushed vaccine will be safe as they would catch any noteworthy complications in the early safety trials in all likelihood. I would be slightly less confident if it was a vaccine based on some of the newer technologies, just since they are newer. I doubt it would change my willingness to get vaccinated. The more likely issues would be how long does the immunity last and how effective is it at generating an immune response. Many vaccines only generate a good response 80-90% of the time, which is why you get multiple shots.

Whatever you do has to be understandable and enforceable. For example if you went by census tracts too many people would have no idea if they were locked down. If you just do some combination of counties that can also lead to issues. I had mentioned Marshfield and the Dells as 2 places that cross county borders. I'm not sure about SE Wisconsin, but the general density along the coast could lead to some issues. They might be solvable, but it would take some work.

https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/situation.html https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/covid-19/data.htm I'm not saying I google 'state' department of health coronavirus but maybe that was all it took

Eventually though more students requires really expensive things like more dorm space more professors. It's the same thing in K-12, overhead doesn't meaningfully decline as a percentage of revenue after a certain point, so chasing revenue doesn't really help.

Have no fear the MBA's are winning everywhere. Unfortunately that has a tendency to lead to the opposite of delivering value to ones current 'market' and instead diverts attention and resources towards growing revenue. Over the years it has often reminded me of listening to second wave Moneyball believers who were oblivious to the fact that OBP was no longer undervalued. Too much business ideology assumes growth, or is biased towards growth. It runs into all kinds of trouble in education which needs to be run recognizing marginal growth is rarely an option.

Homer your inflation adjusted number made me just a little sad, since that was really close to what I paid my final year at UW 20 years ago. I basically managed to hit the front end of the crazy tuition increases as a student and then the backend as a parent. I'm sure there are multiple causes, in general faculty pay doesn't seem really compelling as an explanation between the rise of adjuncts and their low pay. All the Faculty compensation studies I've seen put UW middle to bottom of the pack as well. Facilities and middle management seem like the bigger culprits, though it really depends on which campus you are talking about. Those I think help explain the national trend. Locally though a huge driver is the drastically reduced support from the state compared to the 70's and earlier.

I'm done with loan incentives. No one in my family has ever taken out private loans, but amazingly enough there has always been 1 catch or another preventing us from qualifying for 1 loan forgiveness plan or another. Or another family member found out that not all of his loans automatically went into deferment with the CARES act! Even the 10 year forgiveness program people have discovered all types of issues (Like the loan company automatically giving you a 10 year payoff schedule). Considering you can only decided to accept what is offered there is no real 'shopping' to be had. Many traditional humanities majors are actually very good training grounds for critical thinking, less so departments and degrees that have been overrun by post modernism or heavily influenced 'methods'. I routinely learn a great deal from my history and English colleagues. We also view the development of critical thinking as a full K-12 endeavor. And even for our best students it takes most of that time. Colleges packed with students who can only conceive of college as leading to a job frankly stand little chance of systematically getting students ready to think critically.

You mean like a Socially Transmitted Disease

Snapper I don't think we are terribly far off in what we want things to look like at all. Both WI and MN have loosened a few things and we are going to see what impact that has within a week. Hopefully when adjusted for increasing test capacity that doesn't lead to any significant increase rate of news cases and we can take a few more steps after that... I'm mostly concerned about getting the discussion right. It's a big, real issue. Its new. We don't have to have versions of the same mediocre political discussions that we've had for decades, its a chance to do this one better. For example I saw that the WI manufacturers had released some ideas about a week ago. At my relatively quick glance there were some potentially good ideas on how to save people and the economy so to speak.