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.

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.

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.

It's almost as if there was a reason that the NBA and NHL are doing a bubble.

It certainly seems like MLB is going to try and power through, positive tests be damned. The problem becomes if things get delayed. Are they going to tack on these games at the end of the season? They've already added on a few extra days to the postseason with the added round. You know they don't want to go any farther into November with the World Series than is absolutely necessary.

This also doesn't bode well for the NFL since there's obviously much more close contact than in MLB. As for college, I'm not entirely sure how they go about having any sort of a season. You've got the money issue for one. The players aren't getting paid. Then there's the issue of them being college students, most of whom are probably living at home right now. So you're going to move them back to college just to play sports. Major conference football I'm sure they'll push through because there's so much money involved. Smaller conference football and lesser sports are way less likely to be played. Just push things to the spring and see where we're at then. This thing didn't really blow up here until April. So in four months we've seen deaths and cases skyrocket, then cases leveled off/dropped a bit while deaths dropped dramatically, and now cases and deaths are increasing again, all in a four month span. So who knows where we'll be on Jan 1.

I said this a couple months ago and couldn't follow my own advice. I fully intend to now though.

Posted a response but decided to edit it out because it's not worth it.

Personally, I find bigotry, racism and sexism extremely objectionable. The TOS also states:

Aggie Sports Talk has the right (though not the obligation) to, at the sole discretion of Aggie Sports Talk ... terminate or deny access to and use of the Website to any individual or entity for any reason, at the sole discretion of Aggie Sports Talk.

That being said, I don't think he should be banned, but rather given a warning that posting something like that again could lead to a banning. He can post whatever he wants about Trump or COVID, however true or untrue and we can disagree with him (and he can disagree with us). But he definitely crossed a line with that post.

It's not tinged with racism. It straight up is racist. And it's homophobic. And it's sexist.

Trump's not quitting the race. If he loses, he'll just claim all sorts of election fraud and say the election was rigged. He's already been planting the seeds by ranting about mail in ballots. That's only going to increase as we get closer to the election.

Those charts are from April 15, genius. 100,000 more Americans have died since then.

Deaths per 100K with over 100 confirmed deaths:

Belgium: 84.4
UK: 66
Spain: 60.8
Italy: 57.8
Sweden: 54.8
France: 46
US: 41.8

Of course, our numbers continue to go up while theirs don't. The six countries ahead of us recorded 54 deaths today and 34 deaths on Sunday. We recorded 465 on Monday and 380 on Sunday. We averaged 2.5 deaths per 1M people the last two days. Those countries combined averaged 0.3 deaths per 1M people. So people are currently dying here at 8x the rate that they are in those six countries combined.

Best joke I saw was they were going to change the name to the DC Redskins.

More deaths each of the last three days than any day since June 11. I was hoping Tuesday's jump was just due to a delay in reporting from the holiday weekend but it doesn't appear that way. The next few days will be very interesting to see where we're headed considering that deaths generally lag behind cases.

Once again, it’s almost as if there are outcomes from getting Covid other than either dying or being asymptomatic.

I’m confused. Did the protests increase the number of positive tests or are they inflated by doctors?

As for the number of tests we’re doing, if only we had increased testing in March rather than downplaying the virus and refusing to test as many people as possible. I can’t imagine the reason why testing didn’t increase sooner. If you’re going to blame the hospitals for artificially increasing the numbers (I don’t agree with this but we’ll go with it), then you need to acknowledge how many more cases we would have had Trump not held numbers down by not testing or how some states (Florida was one) weren’t reporting actual numbers because they didn’t want to look bad.

The numbers aren’t perfect. It’s almost impossible for them to be. But the bottom line is we’ve done a terrible job at containing this thing. Some of that is on Trump. But a lot of it isn’t. People refusing to wear masks for any number of dumb reasons or putting themselves in stupid situations unnecessarily. And it’s going to cost us in a number of ways.

I realize you think it's that because you're a racist Trump loving buffoon, but it actually, it matches the timing of lots of states opening things up. And that's not a red state thing either. California has seen numbers rise also.

If people would just sacrifice a couple weeks of their lives and do everything they can to stay super careful, we'd make significant progress. But we, as a society, have generally refused do that. Lots of people have, which has helped, but not as many as should be doing it. Just wear a damn mask for a few weeks. I get it. I don't like wearing a mask either. I'm young and healthy so I'm in the low risk category. If I get Covid, I'm almost certainly not going to die. I might not even need to go to a hospital. There's a decent chance I don't even suffer any symptoms at all. But you can be asymptomatic and still pass this thing on. But I still wear a mask when I go to a store because it's the right thing to do.

Barring an unrealistic solution like literally everyone staying in their home for two weeks, this thing isn't going away any time soon. But we can significantly limit the damage if we just stay vigilant. But it takes a vast majority of people buying in. And that's where we're failing. Because too many people care more are selfish and don't care enough and it's going to cause shutdowns to go on much longer than necessary.

California numbers continue to go up also.

This thing isn't going away, especially since most (all?) states continue to open things up more.

I've got bad news for you.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/coronavirus-us-cases-deaths/?itid=sn_coronavirus_2

Now, there is the caveat that we're testing more than before, but the cases certainly aren't going down. Bunch of other states are seeing similar bumps also.

The issue with looking at the overall data for the US is it looked like cases were going down because New York blew up so badly originally and really got stuff under control. So the overall daily new cases were going down but the non-NY cases were going up.

I might be wrong but I don't think it's actually Newsom's call. If it was Newsom's call, all California universities would be closed in the fall (or not closed, either way, it would be all or none). But right now it's only the state schools.

This issue for college sports is if the universities are closed and only doing online learning, how are you going to do athletics? You're going to open up some sort of housing for just the athletes? If so, is it dorms or apartments. What about practicing? You're going to need staff there besides just the coaches. How would that work? This goes beyond just California. I've seen other instances of schools saying if there's no classes, we're not doing sports in the fall.

It's almost as if there are outcomes other than:

A: Dead
and
B: Perfectly healthy

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/opinion/coronavirus-young-people.html

Can’t really blame him. I mean, Covid-19 is basically just the flu, and probably not even that bad. What are you going to do, shut down all the nursing homes every time someone has the flu?