Human life is sacrosanct.

My sister is a medical doctor and she says they have never seen anything like this; the stuff is probably mutating already.

Her colleague didn’t really think COVID was that bad, and just last week her sister was put on a ventilator with no good prospects. My sister says she’s been quiet and probably feels like a fool listing all the mortality rates being low and such. I mean, this is no joke.

I hope this is some type of farce, but as time passes I think the results speak for themselves.

I made a very big mistake in my last post. It was UNC, not NC State that changed its Covid plan. And, they did not do the right thing for the athletes, only for the common student. The athletes must stay on and prepare for a game this month against Syracuse. This could be a huge mistake that could reverberates throughout FBC football and even all winter sports.

Half a year into this thing and little about it is a "given." Remember when it was going to decline in the heat of the summer? More and more stories about serious conditions that fall short of mortality....unclear if younger people will transmit the disease even if they are asyptomatic themselves. New stories every week about whether or not those infected will develop any immunity and if so, for how long. I find myself constantly saying, "We don't know what he don't know." Not a real profound thought but seems to be a fair comment.

That's why we have force majeure clauses

The point is young people spread it around to those who get very sick and die. We're trying to stop that.

I have no axe to grind, but we sure better learn from this. And the Presidential election has engulfed this.

- Sweden originally looked to be a risk taker and now, apparently, has had good results (they protected the old & vulnerable, no large gatherings over 500?, and let others build immunity).

- some of the strictest countries have been hammered.

- obesity & vitamin D deficiency are rarely mentioned. We didn't have the obesity problem when we had the Spanish flu.

- countries who have used the HCQ cocktail early (w zinc) have faired far better. Numerous studies confirm. Cheap & safe. Lancet & another major medical journal had to withdraw their critically faulty studies. Unprecedented.

- about 8 major cities had their long term elderly care hammered when they inserted infected patients back into elder care facilities. Huge death numbers.

- Large states not prepared with PPE / ventilators.

- unintended consequences: depression, suicide, delayed medical screenings, spousal abuse, lost homes (now temporarily in obeyance), children delayed education & socialization, Trillions added to our debt, rioting in about 15 cities (a complex mix of factors), Yelp predicts over 50% of restaurants or small businesses will close?

- Shocking misperceptions on how Covid affects the young.

https://twitter.com/brithume/status/1295693228096839681?s=20

Again this isn't only about the athletes. It's about how it spreads. An asymptomatic college student can easily transmit it to at risk populations. Additionally we don't know all of the long term, possibly permanent, damage this disease is causing to the cardiovascular and pulmonary systems. I work in healthcare and I've seen what it's doing to at risk populations. Even people who have "recovered" spending months in rehab struggling to breathe and unable to walk for more than 5-10 feet without becoming fatigued. If we can prevent even 1 person from suffering this fate than a shut down is entirely worth it. Football is a game, people are losing their lives.

it is safer now for the UNC football players in that that courses are all distance and and so will not be mingling with classmates. Players are tested weekly at UNC (or more frequently) from a newscast I watched yesterday. Will be interesting to see how this plays out. In the general student population, partying seems to be the issue - at Norte Dame the recent outbreak is associated with that and most that tested positive were male seniors (my wife said “no surprise there”)I don’t think the postponement/cancellation of football will have an extreme impact on those who are going to school primary for a degree. For those whose whole life and hopes lie with football (like last-chance U types) it will likely be psychologically devastating. I suspect some will drop out and go home to not so good environments.

Our players were sent home earlywhen it was looking more and more like no fall (and practicing without a ball against trash cans seemed like a waste). That was a cost saving since we didn’t have to house or feed them before school started. We do still have 8-10 kids housed who would have had to return to not too stable environments. I think we sometimes forget some of our players are coming from areas and situations that are very challenging.

It would be interesting to know what percentage of football players test positive after the Fall. They are not going to be isolated. I suspect they will go to parties. They will likely eat in communal settings or have the exposure to shopping etc, some may not be on campus but who knows how safe their living conditions will be. A lot of the students will catch it whether they play football or not. The argument that “ if it just saves one life” assumes that playing is riskier than the players self directed alternative.
Is it?

"Sweden originally looked to be a risk taker and now, apparently, has had good results (they protected the old & vulnerable, no large gatherings over 500?, and let others build immunity)." Huh?
DPM (deaths per million)
Sweden: 575
Norway: 107
Denmark: 49
Guess which countries acted early?

"some of the strictest countries have been hammered."
Maybe early on. But countries that acted with vigilance have it under control, especially compare with U.S.

Understand that the virus is going to make it through populations eventually, the numbers above just indicate where the progression has been to this point. The virus now is killing Swedes at a single digit rate per day, and they haven’t killed their economy. They’re still going to school and playing sports.

Al Jazeera, August 19: Philippines faces worst COVID-19 crisis in Southeast Asia

"The government imposed one of the world's strictest lockdowns which lasted from March until June.

"The lockdown in the capital, Manila, is easing, and many are hoping it will help kick-start economic recovery."

Their case & death numbers appear on the rise.

We've apparently had a month long reduction in infections, and the head of the CDC predicts a death rate decline next week (death a lagging indicator).

Winter is coming
Sweden made the right choice

Countries that exposed more of the population in spring will have fewer deaths in coming months, You can see this already:
Sweden 8/20 1 death. California 8/20 135 deaths
Sweden has a quarter of California’s population

Lockdowns aren’t saving lives , just changing temporal distribution of deaths.

Come on vaccine... come on... maybe an Aggie will be key in developing one.

Stay Safe all, football will be back, but not yet.

I know a lot of work has been done to test vaccines at the Primate Center on campus.

Sweden has almost twice as many deaths per 1M people as California does (575 vs 308). Lockdowns work, people here just aren't taking them seriously or following the rules. I've got my theories as to why, you might have different ones. It doesn't really matter why at this point.

We as a country have essentially chosen Sweden's route of just letting people die while also severely harming the economy because people aren't taking this thing seriously enough.

The point is that California will catch up to Sweden over time. Unless we have a cure or a vaccine the virus will eventually infect roughly the same proportion of the population, no mater if you lockdown or not This is not a new observation, that’s how they described the “flattening the curve” When you flatten the curve you don’t lessen the area underneath the curve because it stretches out a longer time.
Score for August 20th: California 135 deaths Sweden 1. Sweden is dominating at the start of the second half.

PS - Sweden’s death rate is higher than it could be because they don’t usually send elderly to ICU. Scandinavians are practical about spending on young folks in preference to old,

Well if its not COVID its smoke. Our guys wouldn't be able to practice, at least in Davis, if we still had a season.

feels like we should be heading to Reno for the causeway!

Yep, similar conditions.

we are seeing the sun today so keeping fingers crossed. First day our air quality wasn’t in the unhealthy range by the afternoon.

So just opening everything up and letting the virus run it's course is the only way to deal with this?

Spain, Italy, France and UK all have death rates per 1M people similar to ours. We're at 551 and they range from 468 to 619. They've also had way fewer announced cases then us. We're at 17997 per 1M and they range from 3800-9000. That's a big enough gap that I think we can safely assume they've had way fewer people infected. Yet those four countries had 7800 new cases and 88 deaths combined yesterday while we were at 48000 new cases and 1300 deaths. Add in Germany and you get 9200 new cases and 97 deaths for the five countries total. We've got roughly the same population as those five countries combined. They didn't just let the virus run it's course. They locked down just like we did. They were just wildly more successful than we have been.

I don't think there's one way to deal with the virus and every other choice is wrong. Maybe not doing anything worked fine for Sweden. Those other 5 countries didn't and that seems to have worked well for them also. The problem is we're not really picking either path.

I was sitting in my truck looking out at the Bay last Saturday at dusk...the weather got really humid, and Thor started cracking down visible bolts all over the place...I was watching in horror...because it has been so dry, you know fires were starting up...all over the place. Two of my jobs were direclty affected, one shut down as the entire mountainside is basically a fuel center, thankfully the other two are free of this mess aside from the smoke.

May you live in interesting times...

You can’t trust the number of cases comparing countries because they have different levels of testing.
Deaths Per million is useful but in comparison to where the country is on the infection curve. If you’ve had a lot of cases and the deaths are high that’s better than if you’ve had few cases and the deaths are high.
High Deaths and low cases may reflect how callous the society is to the elderly..
All the flare ups seem to die off on their own, lockdown or not. The population where there’s been a flare up is less vulnerable to future flare ups.
There is some percentage of infection or vaccination of the population that when it is reached will preclude spread of the virus. No one knows what that percentage is, because there is some preexisting immunity in the population. The combination of preexisting immunity plus the resistance people gain from exposure seems to bring the virus under control. That’s why it dies down in one area like Sweden or Italy and can still flare up later in a place like California.
The virus is too infectious for a society to hide from for an extended period; there is no way to do so and still function to provide the other needs of people.
If you are a vulnerable individual you should isolate until there is a vaccine. Society can’t afford to isolate people in general who face negligible risk.

I agree that the case numbers aren't super accurate. There's no way for them to be without literally testing everyone who hasn't gotten it yet every day.

I also agree that without a vaccine, there's no way to completely stamp this thing out unless people just stayed in their home everyday for like 3 weeks, which also isn't the least bit realistic. But there are ways to limit it and to contain it. Germany sure seemed to be able to contain it well. As did South Korea. But you need buy in from the people to do it and we don't have it here for a number of reasons.

It's tough to compare countries and even cities within the countries. Like you said, so many factors go into how quickly the virus spreads and how serious the consequences are when it spreads (not just deaths but hospitalizations as well). Maybe Sweden had the hospital capacity to withstand just letting the virus run its course. Or maybe they didn't and were just willing to take the risk. I have no idea. But at least some places in the US, we didn't/don't have that capacity.

There isn't and shouldn't be a one size fits all solution to this. Some small town in California shouldn't be forced into complete lockdown just because the virus is blowing up in SF or LA. But we do need people to be careful and not necessarily go about their daily lives like normal. Socially distance. Wear a mask. Avoid big gatherings. You can do these things and still have a relatively normal life. But too many people aren't doing this. They don't think it's bad. They're not worried about getting it or spreading it. They think "oh, this won't happen to me". They think it's dumb to socially distance or it's dumb to wear a mask. That's what's causing this thing to be as bad as it has been for this long. We saw the infection rates and death rates drop dramatically following the lockdowns. Then we eased up and people got tired of staying home, they saw deaths continuing to decrease and thought they wouldn't go back up, and big surprise, infections/deaths went right back up again.

There are also lasting health issues that won't show up in the death numbers. And these are happening in people who don't necessarily have severe symptoms or need hospital stays to recover from Covid. They're happening to young healthy people. That's something that can't be ignored either.

Contrary to popular belief there are aspects of life that are not within our power to change. People get sick and die. My brother died in Denmark of cancer during the start of this epidemic, I think they would have maybe been willing to try a little more to save him except for the Covid appearance. My wife died here in the states, and her care was also disrupted by the Covid shutdown.

There are many reasons people die and many ways those causes of death might be impacted.
A recent study indicated that if everyone drank two cups of coffee a day, hundreds of thousands of lives could be saved each year. Yet somehow there is no mass hysteria mandating coffee consumption.

We now know COVID isn’t going to kill 99.4% of the people who get it, it’s time to stop treating it as the apocalypse.

River, sorry to hear about your losses. Your spirit seems strong.

Thanks