[dragontamer]

We all know the gameplan.

1. Vaccines (most effective do it first).

2. Masks everywhere.

3. Lockdowns, if necessary.

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The big question right now is if we should push button#3. Many of us hoped it wouldn't be necessary, but things really are that bad now that we're contemplating pushing the button.

Lockdowns are themselves staged. We can lockdown schools (already happening in many colleges effectively. I have cousins who are off of college because they've extended their winter break, to minimize COVID19 spread).

---------

There's also lesser actions: I work in technology. All in-person meetings have been canceled. Schools are "sometimes online" in my area, depending on local conditions. Testing has gone up significantly, we try to catch the disease and encourage people to stay home asap to minimize spread. Etc. etc.

There's plenty of actions we can do, even if we decide against lockdowns.

[kbos87]

I put myself firmly in the camp of “vaxxed, boosted, and done”, and I’d say that’s the attitude of more people than we all might think.

I think you have the theoretical game plan right, but I’d say that #3 is no longer within the realm of possibility in the US. There’s just no public support for it amongst anyone but the tiny percentage of the most cautious among us.

On #2, I’d even say that yes, masks still make sense in crowded indoor non-optional settings - meaning places we all have to go like public transit, grocery stores, and hospitals. But I’m already past the point of ever wearing a mask outdoors, and I’d also argue that it shouldn’t be a requirement for vaccinated individuals in optional spaces like gyms, bars, restaurants.

[Ichthypresbyter]

Plus of course in bars and restaurants they are pointless theater- wearing a mask to walk to your table, then taking it off to eat, drink and talk loudly for several hours, does precisely nothing.

[Sohcahtoa82]

Agreed on the masks in bars/restaurants just being theater, but the alternative was never going to be masks not being required, it would be that indoor dining wouldn't be permitted.

[kbos87]

Agreed. At least where I live (a major American city) there’s already no expectation or enforcement once you enter a bar, despite us having an indoor mask mandate that people are relatively good about following everywhere else. I’d be willing to guess that the city knows and has chosen not to enforce it in certain settings.

[cure]

Sigh. This is wrong, and I wonder why it is so hard to understand that it's all about probabilities.

Being unmasked for 50% (?) of the time (while eating, say) you are in an enclosed space is obviously less risky than being unmasked 100% of the time.

[Sohcahtoa82]

Except at a restaurant, the unmasked time is closer to 95%-99%, depending on how long it takes to get a table, and then how long you're there.

My wife an I recently went out for breakfast. There was no wait for a table, so the masked time was basically less than a minute, but let's call it a full minute. Then, we were there for about 40 minutes unmasked.

That's a 97.5% time unmasked, talking or eating. You cannot possibly convince me that the 1 minute I had my mask on made ANY difference.

That said, the alternative to the "mask until you're seated" policy was never going to be "no masks", it would end up being "no indoor dining".

[dragontamer]

Were you really eating for all 40 minutes?

Or were you socializing for 30 minutes after actually eating for 10? And during the socializing period, you didn't feel like wearing a mask?

---------

Surely, when you were seated, you didn't have food yet. You had some time to place an order. It takes a few minutes to even fetch drinks from the back sometimes, depending on what the drinks are.

[ptudan]

Literally no one is doing this. I'm not arguing that what you're describing isn' safer -- but seriously, no one is doing this. They could, they definitely could.

But everyone who is going to a restaurant in a "mask to the table" kind of area is wearing it for about 30 seconds til they sit at their table. Maybe on the way to the bathroom.

I know a few states had tried to pass mandates about wearing your mask when you were being waited on or when you were socializing/not actively eating. I don't think those stuck though because they are impossibly hard to enforce.

[spookthesunset]

So what? Why is Covid the single only thing that matters. Covid is endemic. Mandating masks says “Covid is literally the most important thing for you”.

No. I’m boosted. I’ve got plenty of other problems that are far higher in priority than Covid or the spread of Covid. Nobody should be required by law to wear a mask indoors at this point.

[dragontamer]

Keeping a mask off your face while indoors is that important to you?

Why? No one has ever been able to tell me why a mask on a face was so terrible, to the point where I'm pretty sure that its just partisan bickering / political theater.

[spookthesunset]

Yes. I like to see faces. I like to smile at my daughter and see her face and have her see mine.

Masks are absolutely corrosive to society. They should have stayed off last June.

[cm2187]

Until when? Until covid goes away (which Biden implied earlier this year, that the reason we still have covid is because of the unvaccinated)? Vaccines seem to do nothing to infections, it only reduces the risk of hospitalisation and death. In the UK the % of positive cases that are vaccinated is pretty much the same than the % of people vaccinated in the population. Covid isn't going away.

So are you suggesting vaccines, masks and lockdowns forever? I don't think many will agree to that. I certain don't.

[dragontamer]

If this is our new reality then this is our new reality.

Given that our hospital systems are being pushed to basically their breaking point, we need to do what we can to help our the nurses / doctors handle this situation.

A cloth mask is something like 30% effective. That's better than nothing, and certainly can slow down the spread if used universally. Booster-vaccines are something like 70% vs Omicron.

You do what you can, with the tools you have.

[cm2187]

I don't know the situation in the US, but here in the UK, the only reason there is a strain on hospitals is not because of high hospital admissions, they aren't particularly high. It is because of mandatory self-quarantine requirement for hospital staff who test positive, which result in staff shortage. We wouldn't do that with a cold, and this variant, at least to the vaccinated, is little more than a cold.

[dragontamer]

For crying out loud man...

If you are sick, stay home. Don't infect your colleagues, don't infect your patients. Its not that hard.

---

The fact that you're arguing for the opposite is incredibly callous and reckless of you. Its like the pandemic has removed you of common sense.

That's literally why we have paid sick leave. Having 5% of your workforce stuck at home is better than those people coming in and infecting _EVERONE ELSE AT THE OFFICE_.

[jdminhbg]

It seems like you misunderstand what people are calling for. It doesn't make sense for a triple-vaxxed, asymptomatic, positive test to be quarantined for ten days. We have rapid tests that are very good at determining whether people are actually infectious. We can use those to return asymptomatic people to work faster with minimal risk of spread.

[dragontamer]

In the USA, we've already changed our guidance to 5-day quarantines. So as usual, my words are USA-focused and based off of our current US-politics.

There seem to be people arguing for the COVID19 sick doctors/nurses to come in and work as usual, even with symptoms.

If that's not the case in UK (and if you're still on the old 10-day quarantine), then I guess your local politics are just different than what I'm dealing with here. We can blame this misunderstanding on our different local situations for sure.

-------

EDIT: https://www.reddit.com/r/nursing/comments/s0jaai/hey_cdc_im_...

Frankly, we're erring on the side of "too short a quarantine" right now in the USA with these 5-day periods.

[vkou]

The strain on your hospitals and morgues could be much higher, if only those COVID-positive healthcare workers were at work, infecting their colleagues and patients.

I'm not sure that's an outcome you want, though.

[dragontamer]

I'm not so conspiracy minded typically.

But this line of discussion is so bad, that I can only imagine it originated from Russian propaganda. How the hell does bringing in _PROVEN_ COVID19 positive people into a face-to-face setting with sick/immunocompromised patients a possible benefit in this situation?

The situation is sickening to think about. Its not something a rational person could ever possibly come up on their own.

[zarzavat]

Clearly if all doctors stay home sick, then it will lead to many more deaths than if they all came in with COVID.

On the other hand, if only 0.1% stay home sick with COVID, then the effect of their absence will probably be to reduce deaths if their job can be covered by others adequately.

So what we have is a question of degree: there exists a threshold at which doctors (or nurses, etc) should come in even if they have COVID. And somewhat counterintuitively the more doctors who are sick, the greater the likelihood that if they came in with COVID there would be fewer deaths overall.

Exactly where this threshold lies is an open question, and will depend on the facts.

[godshatter]

>Given that our hospital systems are being pushed to basically their breaking point, we need to do what we can to help our the nurses / doctors handle this situation.

Our hospitals have been pushed to the breaking point for a long time. Maybe we should focus on extending our ICU capability to meet the demand better, given that this may be the new normal for who knows how many years yet. I think we need to come to terms with this and expand accordingly on a more permanent basis.

[JSavageOne]

Shocking to me that "lockdown", ie. population-wide government-mandated house arrest, was ever accepted by the public as a viable option.

COVID-19 doesn't effectively transmit outside, so mask mandates outside are at best useless.

[dragontamer]

> COVID-19 doesn't effectively transmit outside, so mask mandates outside are at best useless.

https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2022/01/07/deer-ohio-inf...

Are white-tailed deer commonly seen indoors? Or maybe, your assertion is full of crap.

[JSavageOne]

Straight from your article:

"It's possible the deer in northeast Ohio contracted it from contaminated water, since the novel coronavirus is shed in human waste. But alternative sources — such as trash, backyard feeders, bait stations and wildlife hospitals — have to be considered, Bowman said."

What does this have to do with masks again? Perhaps you can organize a scientific experiment equipping half the deer with masks, and report back to us with the results.

[dragontamer]

You're saying that 33% of _ALL_ deer in Ohio were drinking from contaminated water?

Maybe the original case came from water, but we all know that COVID19 is primarily a respiratory virus that spreads by breath and air.

[zarzavat]

It certainly seems likely that deer engage in behaviours outside that humans do not, that leads to much closer contact. I can think of at least one such behaviour. I don't think that wild animals are a good model for human epidemiology.

[dragontamer]

Occam's razor is that COVID-19 spreads in the outdoors.

[throw10920]

OP's exact words were "COVID-19 doesn't effectively transmit outside". Read the "effectively" - he's clearly not saying that it doesn't transmit at all (obviously it does if you go outdoors and then cough right into someone else's face from two inches away), just that it doesn't do so effectively.

Deer don't do social distancing. They sleep together, and move around in herds for most of their day. COVID can both spread terribly outdoors (which it does) and lots of deer can get it exclusively outdoors.

[ZephyrBlu]

You might find this video interesting: https://youtu.be/7s4Tp6MNhHw

TLDW: lockdowns are ineffective because they focus on protecting the wrong people. They can also cause harm to people.

They also touch on schools/colleges and say it makes no sense to lock them down because young people are very low risk.

[unethical_ban]

Let's be clear on this: The majority of humanity is not okay with the idea of wearing masks full-time in all public places, and shutting down densely populated activities forever.

Masks make sense locally, temporarily, and as circumstances warrant. Such as a hospital or pharmacy during a flu outbreak, or when someone thinks they may be sick (cough or sneeze fits).

There doesn't seem to be much we can do to stop this in the near term. The idea of stamping out COVID quickly like we thought we could do in the spring of 2020 is gone.

It is time now to understand we live with it, to be cautious when we feel ill and isolate ourselves, and to get the preventative measures that help best (vaccines).

#2 and #3 are for imminent emergencies.

[holbrad]

I think answer to #3 is no and in fact in hindsight should have always been no.

Here in the UK we are in a terrible position of having to eventually pay for insanely expensive lockdowns that effectively did very little.

And we are now in the exact same place, as we were previously, having the same "discussion".

[cryptonector]

Where the hell are you that this is your reality? Here in Texas it is absolutely not the case that "but things really are that bad now that we're contemplating pushing the button".

[khazhoux]

Is that because Texas numbers are good (I'm pretty sure they're not) or because Texas would never contemplate that button?

[dahfizz]

Texas has much lower per capita cases and deaths than a state like New York. But I also suspect that Texas values freedom relative to safety much higher than states like New York.

[epakai]

Texas leadership is focused on performing for their constituents. That relegates the contemplation to progressive city/county leadership who are willing to push back on statewide policy when the numbers get bad.

A lot of this gets left to the choice of business owners and school administrators who have to balance their choices with fiscal concerns and public perception. There is no political leadership position for them to fall back on. Basically everyone's hands are tied, and some group is going to be upset whether buttons get pressed or not.

[cryptonector]

Both.

[contravariant]

Those are actions, they do not form a plan.

There are several ways this could end, but the scenarios that could realistically keep most people from encountering the virus have proven implausible. So while you can use maska and lockdowns indefinitely, it's not much of a plan.

Arguably boosting the entire population and waiting for the last wave to pass is a more realistic plan, even though nobody so far seems willing to admit they're planning to do this, they just are doing it.

[dntrkv]

In the US, there is no political capital left to even attempt number 3. Not gonna happen.

[JumpCrisscross]

Except there are so many options in between Nos. 2 and 3. Reduced capacity. Outdoor dining. Testing requirements. As well as the wide, wide gulf between total lockdowns and selective ones.

[dragontamer]

That's true.

I think my overall point is that we're well into discussing options between 2 and 3 now. This Omicron surge is truly ferocious, and far worse than people predicted (or really, hoped for).

There's also the evidence that Omicron subsides rather quickly (at least, in South Africa it did). So any such emergency measures would truly be temporary, more so than the original strain or Delta-surges of the past. Under these statistics / calculations, it makes more sense to perform bigger actions.

[khazhoux]

I'm still pissed that in California we handled the possible in-between steps so clumsily.

My 2020 Roger Waters concert was canceled. Sure, that made sense -- 15,000 people all packed inside the venue. But at the same time, my hairdresser was shut down, not even a single customer at a time allowed. Made no sense to me.

[thomascgalvin]

> The big question right now is if we should push button#3 [lockdowns].

I think a more salient question is if we can push button #3. Nobody wants more lockdowns. The vaccinated are tired of the unvaccinated fucking everything up for us, and the unvaccinated have never been open to the idea.

This is another thing pointed out by the article: there just isn't the will to do it, even if it was necessary.

This isn't being made as a medical decision, it's being made as a political decision.

[dragontamer]

https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/rxwnbl/i_am_a_new_york...

You either do an orderly shutdown, or you get de-facto shutdown.

In the case of this high-school, they only needed ~10% of students / teachers to get COVID19 before chaos reigned supreme. Students are now skipping classes out of fear of their own safety, teachers are collecting students into auditoriums (because too many teachers are sick, not enough substitute teachers to watch the students 30-at-a-time anymore, gotta collect all the students together to more efficiently watch over them).

At this point, the high-school in this Reddit discussion should have just an orderly shutdown, rather than pretending everything is fine.

[holbrad]

If people aren't getting COVID and are staying at home because of a shutdown, then this exact same situation happens again just later in time... (After the school shutdown)

[dragontamer]

No it isn't.

An orderly shutdown is better, because all the students remain at the same point of their lessons. If you're a calculus teacher currently teaching basic integrals this week... you won't be able to teach "integration by parts" (or other advanced integrals) 1 month from now, because 10% of your students were missing.

----------

In contrast, a formal shutdown means that _EVERYBODY_ gets held off at this lesson. You cut your losses, formally shutdown school, and start everybody up when times are safer.

You can plan around a formal shutdown. You can't plan around a de-facto shutdown. All the students are going to have bits and pieces of knowledge and are unable to catchup, because they all randomly lost bits of information due to randomly missing class.