Yeah, I mostly agree, but I think they are mostly concerned about the schools in these areas. These are also orthodox Jewish areas, so not as much concern about residents altering behavior and shopping elsewhere.

Since you brought it up, let's be real: there is way too much historical, political and social sensitivity around even the appearance of targeting Jewish areas (for very good reason BTW) for any real enforcement actions to ever take place. It's similar to the masks issue on the subway, the MTA can make all the pronouncements they want, in the end the NYPD will have zero part in being the subject of viral videos of people creating scenes over being asked to wear masks, especially post-George Floyd.

We have to accept the fact that the mask issue is a non-starter socially. The only reason people did it back in Feb-May was because almost everyone knew someone who was dying from COVID around them. Until we get back to that (heaven forbid), it's not happening. Everything else is just political theater.

I'd argue that the NYPD had no problem being heavy handed in enforcing the rule among certain segments of the population until they got criticized for unevenly enforcing it. Which they were.

utter disaster is now on the horizon for already struggling ny restaurants. it got cooler tonight and i was just outside walking by several local streeteries that have been busy during the warm days lately, but all were empty with zero customers around dinnertime tonight. the head nytimes reviewer is struggling to know if he can even recommend eating out:


New York restaurants are really in trouble.

First, Pete Wells writes about the disaster on the horizon:

I can’t believe we’re going to risk another outbreak in New York so restaurants can have dining rooms that are three-quarters empty. I can’t believe restaurants and the people who work in them have been failed so badly by Washington that many will have no choice but to go along with it. I can’t believe clear, straightforward safety advice is still so hard to come by at the government level that I had to spend most of a week on the phone with experts, asking whether readers should actually eat inside the places I’m writing about.

And Gothamist reported this shocking prediction:

The new audit, released by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, suggests that well over a hundred thousand jobs may be lost in the next six months, as well as a third or half of NYC’s remaining restaurants and bars.

So how about a bailout package to support restaurant workers.

How about one for oilfield workers—that industry is really in the pits.

There’s an almost endless list of very hard hit industries. I suspect restaurants will actually be among the quickest to revive, maybe not with the same owners/names/menus but people want to dine out once it’s safe to do so.

O&G has always been unstable with boom and bust cycles and most people in the industry have been laid off at least once in their careers due market fluctuations. Also, at least here, the industry has been deemed essential so no one was forced to close because of state mandated shut downs. My wife has had to work the entire time during covid.

Not to say restaurants aren't in trouble, but Sunday is typically slower. The weather was similar last night as it was Friday and Saturday, and both nights were fairly normal around me. I also noticed that some places have started using outdoor heating devices, including those of questionable legality and safety.

As for the impending disaster, it's not just restaurants. Many companies in the travel and entertainment industries are facing an existential crisis now, which they were able to put off before because of the paycheck protection program. That expired last week. There was little chance that another lifeline would be thrown from Congress before the election, but now that COVID is burning through the senate and executive branch, that chance has gone to zero.

One thing I'm learning now that I'm back at my place downtown is how much construction noise there is around my place (that I usually avoid). I live in a high development area, but I'm usually up by 6:30 and out of the house by 7:30. I have a massive new office building being built across the street to the North, and a 300m/1,000 ft. residential directly outside my window to the East. They both start at exactly 7:00 am, and now that my work-from-home sleep schedule has shifted more to a midnight - 8 a.m. type deal, I'm usually woken up by piledrivers.

Nothing has changed since Feb (really March)-May. Everyone is still masked, except the Ultra-Orthodox, and we all know why they think it's a hoax. Even the Modern Orthodox communities are complying; it's essentially only the Hasidic enclaves that are wildly flouting rules.

Also, nationally, there is no change from March-May. Death rates have been essentially stable since the Spring. If you were wearing a mask in the Spring, there would be no reason to not wear a mask now.

Huh? US deaths have been on a roller coaster since April. First a big spike, then a second smaller but wider wave which has gotten a little smaller, but is predicted to be on the increase soon.

If you look at the overall weekly US death rates, they've been largely stable (which is a catastrophe, BTW).

according to worldometers:

the 7 day rolling average of covid death rates in the US hit a high of 2,256 per day on 4/21.

then fell to a low of 520 per day on 7/5.

then rose back up to 1,178 on 8/4.

and we've since come down to 736 per day as of yesterday.

so there has certainly been some fluctuation.

but we are by no means out of the woods.

https://uniim1.shutterfly.com/ng/ser...931390/enhance
https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/fjki-2fab

That's about 5.6 per 100,000

putting some colorful artwork up around manhattan chinatown, which has been devestated by corona, to try to draw in more business:


https://newyork.cbslocal.com/video/4...grammable-art/

Just a covid update. From today’s press conference: Tri-State + PA

https://aws1.discourse-cdn.com/busin...685d33519.jpeg

https://aws1.discourse-cdn.com/busin...8ab33e994.jpeg

https://aws1.discourse-cdn.com/busin...888e8eb7f.jpeg

https://aws1.discourse-cdn.com/busin...97c5cc66e.jpeg

https://aws1.discourse-cdn.com/busin...74321f6c8.jpeg

https://aws1.discourse-cdn.com/busin...a2ff21e29.jpeg

This is the real tragedy of Covid. Instead of social distancing, over 70s should just be banned from restaurants and bars.

We also have an irresponsible media that has whipped up such a panic (probably for political purposes, at least in part) that 20-something restaurant workers are afraid of catching it which is ridiculous.

New Orleans is now in phase 3.1. Current 14 day positive rate of 1.55%.

Here is what that entails.

https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.town...b75a.image.jpg
Source: New Orleans Advocate

^ I'm not even understanding what you're arguing. Are you saying that we've failed by forcing restaurants to close, or are you saying that we've failed by allowing restaurants to open?

Anyhow, I agree with 10023 in part (not the part about banning the elderly from restaurants, that's obviously preposterous) that our shitty media has whipped up a frenzy over Covid and short circuited our society's ability to think rationally.

PA looks pretty close to being on NY's naughty list. They better get it together.

Why is it obviously preposterous?

The goal should not be to prevent the spread of the virus to anyone, but to the vulnerable specifically. Restaurants are being forced to deal with debilitating restrictions (that both make them financially unviable, and make the experience much less enjoyable for customers, which further harms restaurants). This is because they are considered to be a “high risk” environment for the spread of the virus.

So, keep the vulnerable out of restaurants.

I’m not going to deal with another year of this, and we shouldn’t allow restaurateurs and others to lose their livelihoods, because old people will feel discriminated against. It is simply a pragmatic approach to a different risk profile.

I don't even know how NYS could enforce a travel ban from PA given the huge border between the two which straddles a largely sparse area.

NYS can't even enforce a travel ban from the states it doesn't border, lol.

I tend to think that working class and poor seniors should be supported so they can isolate if they want, and then we should let everybody make their own decisions. This should be the baseline norm with deviations being well-supported by data and logic.

There are seem to be two main arguments against this:

1) Health care systems will fall over if we let people do what they want, so we have to order them around
2) Young people will give covid to old, so we have to treat everybody the same way

Both of those arguments are pretty weak. Right now we're months into a downward shift in median age of covid infection toward lower risk demographics, which is the outcome you'd expect from rational people responding to the real risks. I don't think that multigenerational households are the norm and these people can make their own decisions about what they want to do.

The first argument is an argument for infringing on individual rights. It's not clear why blanket infringement is more acceptable than targeted infringement (e.g. you can order bars to close but you can't say that 70+ year olds should stay out, not that many go to bars anyway).

I posted this data for BC in the Canada section:

https://i.imgur.com/8zVZmGk.png
http://www.bccdc.ca/Health-Info-Site...2020_final.pdf

These percentages wildly overestimate the odds of death or hospitalization because only a fraction of the true case count is detected. BC had around 0.5% covid antibody seroprevalence back in a June survey.

We still sometimes have people ranting about how young folks are likely die or get very sick or will fill up the hospital beds after engaging in foolish activities. During the pandemic so far BC has had 0 deaths under age 40 and on average people under age 40 have used approximately 1 ICU bed at any given time (23 total during a 7 month period, median stay approximately 10 days).

I figured as much. I was half-tempted to drive up and see family regardless of ban on Texas but didn't want to take risks with my father.

no, actually instead of downplaying it all away and because croaking is not the only covid outcome and not only 70 yr olds get it bad, everyone should just continue to mask and limit indoors activities.

the tragedy is irresponsible and likely murderous people like your fool no mask self who have allowed covid to go on this long and to keep popping back up. :rolleyes:

The small chance of some rare complication for a younger person does not justify what is being done to our lives and economy. And you’ve accepted it completely. Live in a protective bubble if you want - I refuse to.

^ I for one fully support masking as well as banning large "superspreader" type gatherings. What I don't support is mandated lockdowns on businesses. It causes damage way out of proportion to the damage the disease causes to the general population.

We aren't having this debate in April any more, man. We've got data that CLEARLY shows that Covid is just NOT statistically deadlier than other extant viruses (like Flu) for most of the healthy, younger population.

We need a more targeted approach than to just have one elected leader, under the guise of "emergency powers", telling thousands of businesses that they must shut down or else.

Because it's age discrimination.

We cannot ban somebody from a business based on age, gender, sexual orientation, race, etc. It's not enforceable.

I drove to Detroit last month and didn't see any checkpoints on my drive back into NYC. I even noticed a few cars with Texas license plates driving towards the city in NJ. I thought it was odd that there were so many.

So much to unpack here. You're like a chess player that thinks one move ahead instead of five. And who willfully denies the knowledge and logic of the people who know things.

There's no way to sequester one group from the other. The "outside" group will infect the "inside" group, and the "outside" group's infection rate is a huge factor in that.

Also it's not just over-70s. You'd have to set it more like 60 even before getting into younger unhealthy people.

And so on, with points you've ignored ad nauseum.

As for those 20-year-olds, maybe some of them are just ethical?

This is why good leaders use information and experts to help set rules, vs. having the nearest petulant child set them.

I wouldn't be so quick to assume most young people would come out unscathed from covid even if they display mild symptoms at the onset. The obesity rate among Millenials and Zoomers is staggering which is in of itself, a comorbidity.

^ I would

So far there is no evidence that the vast, vast, vast majority of younger people who've contracted COVID are coming out anything but unscathed.

Other viruses that we've lived with for years (and haven't been duped into irrationally fearing) can rarely cause long term effects as well.

Did you know that the bacteria that causes Strep throat can cause heart valve problems decades later?

Should we all "shut down" the planet due to strep throat now?

The virus that causes Mono can rarely case aplastic anemia.

This fear-mongering has zero chance of ending until sane people take control of the dialogue. The media does not count as "sane people", IMO

Should we wait until we get evidence before doing altering our behavior? How many lives should we experiment with?

Thing is that we know about Strep and Mono, we still know relatively little about Covid. I am not for shutting things down; quite the opposite actually but 10023's assertion that over 70's should be isolated indefinitely so he can go back to the gym and that anyone under 40 has nothing to worry about. Again, there's a lot of fat/ out of shape under 40's who are inching toward all kinds of health problems later in life and what if the virus rears its ugly head in 15-20 years with some unknown issue(s)?

Are you serious?

How exactly do you set public policy that way?

"We don't know what this infection that gave you no symptoms or a few sniffles for 3 days does, but just to 'be sure' lets make 30 million people jobless, put 50 million people into bankruptcy, and shut down the livelihoods of people everywhere"

Yes, I agree with your concerns about 10023's comments.

But we have to set public policy based on what we know.

I have little patience for people who say "we need to follow the science" but then go and do the opposite. Over 6 months into the pandemic there is no evidence that 99.9% of healthy people under 60 are having anything more than a syndrome that varies between nothing and sniffles, aches and pains, fevers, and a few days of cough when they get COVID. That's what the data shows.

We are either a data driven society in earnest or we are simply playing lip service to it.

Yes, I'm serious. Where do you draw the line? How long would have been sufficient for us to wait to see the ramifications of SARS before we reacted?

I think it's been proven time and again here that factoring in obesity/age when trying to justify whatever precautions were taken during the shut down only helps the prevailing thought among some (most?) forumers that obese people deserve whatever they get.

I don't personally agree with that (at least, not to the same extent as some of the others here [caveat: I'm overweight]), but it only encourages the monstrosity of thought toward people with health/weight issues.

I'm talking about now, not March or April.

Millions of people are doing just fine having had Covid now, and we have real data to look at to see who tends to get seriously ill and who tends not to. The CDC has this data. That wasn't available in March.

This is how science works. People who claim to be "informed" by science are either informed by science, or they are just talking nonsense.

Public policy is set based on data, when done correctly.

What policy does any state currently have implemented that is beyond CDC guidelines?

The problem is how we are fed the data; it's from the media not so much from the horse's mouth. AKA the medical/ scientific community so if you're a CNN/MSNBC watcher, we are undergoing a civilization ending plague and we should expect to wear masks indefinitely and treat friends and family as Typhoid Mary while Fox viewers think all this is just the sniffles.

Guys like 10023 are finding this all a massive inconvenience and dismiss the seriousness of it because it may not affect them personally.

I agree that the news media have done a poor job but the data's pretty accessible, e.g.:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...scenarios.html

Probability of death given covid infection by age, best case to worst case range in CDC models:

0-19 years: 0.002 to 0.01%
20-49 years: 0.007 to 0.03%
50-69 years: 0.25 to 1%
70+ years: 2.8 to 9.3%

Ratio of estimated infections to reported case counts: 6x - 24x

I think part of the problem is that the spread in risk is extreme and a bit hard to relate to. Also, known case counts have only picked up a small percentage of true cases (with some countries probably picking up 1% or 0.1% of cases because they are testing very few people). Another problem is that most people don't have a good sense of baseline risk. If you're 80+, it's about a 10% fatality rate per year without covid.

True but many either are not interested in combing through the data and just want someone else to spell it out for them or they can't interpret the data. Like you said, most people don't have a basis of reference.

Posted this in the Canadian forum:

I don't live in a place that has over the top friendliness but early on in the pandemic even the level of friendliness with strangers I was used to here had diminished a lot.

Six months later I can say that it has not returned.

There is a level of caution vis-à-vis strangers in almost all situations that I had never observed here before 2020.

In some ways it kinda feels like a U.S. metro area with a high crime rate where people never truly let their guard down. Everyone just seems a bit more on edge and subtly suspicious of others.

I wonder if the way most people used to be in this place (and I assume many other places have undergone the same) will ever go back to the way it was.

One casualty of COVID-19 might be the French-inspired Quebec custom of kissing on both cheeks. Pretty much everyone does (or did) it here as an informal greeting, whether of French origin or not.

It's completely disappeared since March.

Then isolate the morbidly obese under 40s too. I can’t say I would miss them.

The rest is an overabundance of caution bordering on paranoia. People are far too scared of this thing and it’s ruined this year. It can’t be allowed to ruin next.

That would be a bigger tragedy than the deaths, IMO.

It is NOT age discrimination!

That’s like saying it’s gender discrimination to give mammograms to women but not to men. Or how a business decline to serve a pregnant woman alcohol. Or an adult under the age of 21, for that matter.

My life has changed but not drastically. I spend less money as I'm only in a retail store (usually for groceries) maybe 5-6 times/month. I've been to a restaurant twice since March and both times were outside the city in an area with zero cases. So I've saved money there too. I don't miss restaurants all that much. My diet was very good to begin with but has become even healthier now that I'm making every meal myself. I have more free time so I've been exercising more and play catch with 2 different people on a regular basis. It's nice not being indoors at a gym and won't be going back till community spread goes to zero and stays there for at least 3 weeks.

The big difference has been my interaction with strangers. I physical distance 100% of the time (2-4m depending on circumstances) but am extra careful around high risk people: under 40 and children. It's a bit of a nuisance having to keep an eye on people constantly so they don't get too close but it's almost second nature now. Some of them are pretty rude and inconsiderate but what else is new? I try not to let people like that get me down. I just ignore them, say nothing, walk around, keep going. The only significant negative has been sports. I miss football and going to games.

I was working at a university lab that conducted research on infection but that's been put on hold temporarily. A large part of our study involved face to face time with participants. We also did blood draws, throat/rectal swabs, and took urine. The whole thing became unworkable with COVID. We're governed by science in everything we do while the university abides by science/fact based pandemic protocols. It wasn't even a question whether we would ignore protocols. Research is bound by strict 'research ethics' so we follow pandemic protocols.... no exceptions. That carries over to my personal life 24/7.