First of all, we need to go over the idea of what it meant to “flatten the curve.”
In epidemiology, the idea of slowing a virus’ spread so that fewer people need to seek treatment at any given time is known as “flattening the curve.” It explains why so many countries are implementing “social distancing” guidelines — including a “shelter in place” order that affects 6.7 million people in Northern California, even though COVID-19 outbreaks there might not yet seem severe.
The faster the infection curve rises, the quicker the local health care system gets overloaded beyond its capacity to treat people. As we’re seeing in Italy, more and more new patients may be forced to go without ICU beds, and more and more hospitals may run out of the basic supplies they need to respond to the outbreak.
A flatter curve, on the other hand, assumes the same number of people ultimately get infected, but over a longer period of time. A slower infection rate means a less stressed health care system, fewer hospital visits on any given day and fewer sick people being turned away.
In the language of calculus, the internal of each curve from beginning to end is the same, the difference is the simultaneous number of cases at the peak.
With the curve flattened, there will still be sick people. New people will be infected and some will die. However, the number of survivors should be better with a flatter curve because the number of sick at any one time does not overwhelm the ability of our health care system to take care of them.
Social distancing and the shutdown was supposed to last until the curve started to flatten.
It seems that in most of the country the curve never peaked. Other than a few localized hotspots (NYC, Detroit, NOLA) hospitals were not swamped. The doomsday scenario of people dying of Coronavirus, lying in hospital hallways because there were not enough beds and rooms and ventilators never materialized. In many places, hospitals have had to furlough workers as they delayed and canceled all non-immediately live-saving procedures.
The rest of America was held hostage by New York City. We couldn’t go back to work until they flattened their curve, and that appears to be finally happening.
However, just as this nightmare is coming to an end, the goalposts have been moved.
It’s no longer about flattening the curve to prevent our hospitals from being overrun. It’s about staying in lockdown until there is a vaccine or there are no new cases.
This is a ridiculous standard to try and achieve.
Consider that yesterday oil dropped to negative $40 per barrel.
The energy sector is about 9% of our GDP. Some of our largest companies are oil and gas producers and refiners. Overall, oil and gas supports 9.8 million jobs or 5.6% of all US jobs.
Only god knows what this will do to the economy.
This happened entirely because of the lockdown. People are not traveling, planes are not flying, driving is way down, and the consumption of goods made from plastics derived from petroleum is down.
The government shut us down and the oil industry in America died. That has never happened before.
We need to go back to work. We need to go back to normal. This lockdown cannot continue as-is for much longer or we will guarantee the destruction of our economy fro a generation.
Some very brave and enterprising people have started to protest the lockdown and want what we were promised. A reopening of America now that the curve has flattened.
How has the Left responded? Threatening those people with death and imprisonment.
Should #StayAtHome protestors who endanger other Americans by not following @CDCgov guidelines about physical distancing be required to sign a waiver refusing medical attention at a hospital and not take up a ventilator if they contract coronavirus? #COVID19 #StayHome
— AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) April 20, 2020
If you exercise your First Amendment rights, the government can deny you health care. This really is a rining endorsement for government controlled health care. This is exactly what the Chinese do with their social credit system.
— ?TooDaLou??? (@janis_alpine) April 20, 2020
April Ryan is not alone in this.
They should also be visibly identified so those sheltering in place can avoid them in grocery stores
— Heidi Finan (@hkfinan) April 20, 2020
I thought the Nazis were bad? Funny how the Left suddenly wants to emulate them.
100%%. And release their insurance company from footing the bill. We all want to get back to work but not at the cost of another life. Because when you think it won’t happen to you—that’s when life (or the virus) can kick you in the rear end!!
— Mary Spicher (@MarySpicher) April 20, 2020
This is an impossible standard. There is no way to prevent anyone from ever catching the Coronavirus ever again.
They should be arrested
— cynthia (@dinghydames) April 20, 2020
DOWN WITH THE FIRST AMENDMENT!
Yes April AND they should be designated as terrorists. If these people were black or brown, they would be arrested for violating the #StayAtHomeOrder
— Sarah (@sarah_dekoven) April 20, 2020
Petitioning your government for a redress of grievances to go back to work is the same as Al Qaeda.
Yes. And be held legally responsible for anyone’s cost for care from a large outbreak in their city that ties back to their protests. And I don’t care if they are broke. They can maybe sell their swastikas and confederate flags on eBay to help pay for the bills. And funerals.
— InMinivanHell (@inminivanhell) April 20, 2020
The only reason to protest wanting to go back to work is because you are a racist and you should be punished for that.
I think they should be charged with 2 things
Civil Disobedience
Endangering Lives— kjax (@jacksonddandkk) April 20, 2020
Arrest people for wanting to go back to work.
Assuming they even KNOW how to sign their name?
— [redacted] (@PastorBruce59) April 20, 2020
Only stupid people want to go back to work. Small business owners who are going bankrupt are just illiterate idiots.
— ?TooDaLou??? (@janis_alpine) April 20, 2020
She’s just making shit up.
— ?TooDaLou??? (@janis_alpine) April 20, 2020
This goes along with the identifying badge. God the Left really love Nazi Germany right now, even if they hate Swastikas.
The Left has moved the goalposts to keep the economy shut down in perpetuity, and if you protest you deserve to get arrested and die.
The Coronavirus has really brought out their inner tyrant.
Twitter is a cesspool. Why people are surprised to find turds in it is beyond me.
Sort of related, have you guys noticed that literally every single person out there saying that “this is the new normal” or “things will never be the same again” are all Leftists?
I love Heidi’s idea.
Those that think the curve is well past the flattening stage (and in my area, that happened weeks ago), should wear identifying colors, badges, hats, whatever. If I walk into a grocery store, and all the Karens run out the door, I would the thrilled. My work for the day would be over.
Seriously, though. I totally agree. The goal posts have moved, and will move again. Again, in my area, the peak is over. We will have a glut of beds, ventilators, and PPE through the rest of this outbreak. Yet… our Governor, and our Mayor are both searching for reasons to keep us under house arrest.
They both want to see a steady decline in new cases, while simultaneously increasing testing. An increase in testing comes with an increase in confirmed cases. There is a definite correlation there.
Which of course means that businesses will not be allowed to open, and this may very well become the new normal.
If I walk into a grocery store, and all the Karens run out the door, I would the thrilled.
Make sure you take a photo of them all violating social distancing as they rush to leave, and post up how they obviously don’t care about murdering each others’ kids.
Turnabout being fair play, and all. 😉
This all makes perfect sense.
The left views the crisis as an opportunity to destroy the economy. By doing so, they hope to defeat Trump. The fact that it’s their doing and that in any case they have no solutions to offer is entirely beside the point, especially with the so-called “media” doing much of the propaganda for them at no charge.
People whose lives are being ruined are merely “eggs” that have to be broken to make the necessary Communist “omelets”.
A couple thoughts:
It seems that in most of the country the curve never peaked. — Oh, it peaked, but the “peak” was well within the capabilities of the normal local health care system to handle. What it didn’t do — what they feared it would do — was spike.
It didn’t spike because the curve was already flattened before anyone spoke of “flattening the curve.” China had been exporting it through normal air traffic since October/November. We were letting people fly in from the Wuhan area in October, but didn’t start testing here until January. It’s absurdly unlikely that the “first confirmed U.S. case” on January 21 was the “first U.S. case”.
If you re-draw the curve with the January-through-March numbers, but set the origin eight weeks further back (early-mid November, when it likely started hitting the U.S. through unrestricted air travel) instead of January 8 (when we started to be concerned), the curve naturally flattens itself.
But we’ll never really know, because of the overwhelming numbers of asymptomatic and seasonal-flu-like cases that recovered normally, and so were never tested for coronavirus.
The government shut us down and the oil industry in America died. — Remember that to Leftist environmental activists, this is a good thing. They’ve been trying to shut down fossil fuel industries for decades, and now they can. If the oil industry collapses, expect Congressional Democrats and Dept. of Energy bureaucrats to throw up so many suffocating regulations that, IF it ever comes back, it will NEVER come back as it was. And the highly-educated and skilled workers in those good-paying jobs be damned.
Killing or crippling that particularly-hated sector of our economy is a feature of the shutdown, not a bug. Just like the firearm industry being closed (where states aren’t listening to the federal mandate), the Left is celebrating people being out of work because of where they work.
This lockdown cannot continue as-is for much longer or we will guarantee the destruction of our economy fro [sic] a generation. — Again, feature, not bug. Right now you have people who aren’t allowed to work due to government mandate, and are collecting an income solely through “wealth distribution” provided by government force, with constantly-shifting goalposts ensuring there’s always justification and no end in sight.
a.k.a. An endless string of Orwellian “Two-Month Plans” (some are saying we should stay shut down until 2022, so that’s a “Two-Year Plan”). Socialism in action. And after a generation of “free money” for not working, nobody is going to want to go back to work. “IngSoc” would be proud.
It is absolutely unsustainable, but they will never willingly let that go, and they hope that in 30 years nobody else will, either.
(Also, were those last two images supposed to be repeats of the one earlier?)