The Great Toilet Paper Rush of 2020

[Art Blade]

I think he got the idea but was able to ignore the meaning. The only possible effect I can imagine that would have changed things is if so-called security guys are actually instructed properly and act accordingly. From the looks of it, the security guy was just a hired hand, they put a yellow vest on him over black clothes, and told him to stop people from getting in if a limit was hit. He wasn't a trained security detail nor was he instructed to actually control the queues or anything. His employers are obviously cheapskates.

[PZ]

I think I like your son, PZ He doesn't take any nonsense from anyone...

No he doesn't. I know you well enough to realize that you would like him quite a bit in real life.

He has a Yorkshire Terrier he likes to walk so people think he is benign.

[Art Blade]

 

[fragger]

He has a Yorkshire Terrier he likes to walk so people think he is benign.

It's been my experience that the guys you least want to mess with are the ones who walk little dogs They're usually men who don't feel a need to prove anything to anyone.

[PZ]

  yeah, that would describe my boy. He's not all that big but he exudes an awful aura when he enters one's sphere.

[fragger]

Since the Australian government started reopening stuff a couple of weeks back, a bunch of new cases has popped up in Victoria (the state south of mine). 33 at last count, all in Melbourne, but already people are snapping up toilet paper again Geez, didn't these damn fools learn from the last time?

My state has had 4 new cases during the same time frame. The NSW state government was considering banning people from Victoria from entering this state and setting us back, but it's looking like the ban will not be upheld.

Since we New South Welshmen have long referred to the inhabitants of Victoria as "Mexicans" (because they're south of the border), some wags have suggested building a wall to keep them out... It's not really a laughing matter though.

Since this started, nationwide we have had 104 deaths out of 7,556 cases, of which 6,942 have recovered. We've been luckier then most.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah cases here are going up in some states, down in others. Locally for the general area around my home, cases are way down, I don't think there's been a new one in several days or a week around here. Even New York City is declining though they still have some new ones too. The thing is, and no one can answer me this, are these new cases from people feeling sick and having symptoms and showing up at the hospital, or are these just because of people with no symptoms getting a positive test result, and they are being included in "new cases" even though they aren't really sick? Sure, they could infect someone else, and sure that person might have a bad reaction to it, but do you really count those with no symptoms and no ill effects as being sick?

[Art Blade]

you don't count the "sick." You count the infected. Of which some have recovered meanwhile, others have died, the rest are "active cases" of people who are still producing viruses and potentially infecting others.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Still depends on how much testing is being done and how reliable those tests are. Do a lot of tests and you're going to find more cases, don't do so many tests or any, and the only ones that get counted are the ones showing obvious symptoms who end up at the hospital. I'd like to see numbers that include how many tests are being done in each area so you can get an idea of how that compares to an area that isn't testing as much.

[Art Blade]

I posted a survey on March 18 and you can see those details there for the US. You'll have to click around a bit, however.

For instance,

1,346,672 tested
New Jersey US

and

3,681,317 tested
New York US

[Dweller_Benthos]

Ah yes I see that over there now. Interesting but still it's not easy to see the numbers correlated into something you can use to determine how the number of tests done effects the overall numbers. So New York State has 3,816,485 tested people. Of that number 31,397 deaths, 70,010 recoveries. So about 100,000 total cases. So of the 3,716,485 people who were tested, did they not have it, or did they have it, show no symptoms and recover? Do they still have it but still show no symptoms and are contagious? There's not enough info really.

The county I live in has a population of about 160,000 - 551 cases and 28 deaths. No numbers on how many of those people were tested, I sure wasn't and there's no provision to be tested that I know of, unless you go to a hospital and ask for it and if you're not showing symptoms they won't unless you absolutely need it to travel or have surgery or something like that.

On another note, we can buy toilet paper again, and for the most part any other paper product, just the shelves are not completely stocked like they used to be, and some of the brand names you never heard of before lol. Cleaning products, though, like bathroom cleaners and anything with bleach in it is still in short supply. Hand soap is making a comeback but also not as fully stocked as normal.

[Art Blade]

Dweller, I think that you're confusing something regarding tests. The news, that site, is always about how the pandemic is evolving, how the virus is spreading or being contained. The whole testing you hear and read about is referring to people who are contagious so they can quarantine them and trace contacts. Same goes for people who go to the hospital for treatment: test them whether or not it's a contagious patient suffering from COVID19 or something else. You seem to mix that with another type of test which is irrelevant for the pandemic because it's not telling anything about the current situation regarding the spreading speed of the pandemic. It simply tests whether or not someone has got antibodies as some kind of confirmation whether or not that person has or had been infected, typically emphasis on "had been."

So the first test is, simply put, taking a sample (like mucus) and then trying to breed live viruses out of that sample. If you can, then the person has been infected and is contagious. If you can't, then the person is not contagious. The second test is more for people who want to know whether or not they had been in contact with the virus.

So essentially those numbers about people being tested refer to the "live virus test" and its importance for the speed the pandemic is still spreading. Eventually those numbers produce subclasses of those who are still contagious ("active cases") or either have recovered or died.

As to the site and how you read it: you're missing out on the confirmed cases (like, out of 3M tests, 300k are confirmed) and you're precisely missing out on the active cases. You need to click in the column left to see New York State flash on the map, then click on the dot on the map.

New York, US
Confirmed: 392,883
Deaths: 31,397
Recovered: 70,010
Active: 291,476


I hope this helps

[Dweller_Benthos]

Sure, thanks for that, but what I'm saying is if a certain region is doing tons of testing they are going to find more cases than a region that isn't doing a lot of testing. That second region will only know about the cases that are bad enough to come to the hospital to be confirmed as a definite case. So, let's say out of ten people in each region, the first region tests 9 out of 10, finds 5 cases, some bad enough (say 3) for hospitalization, the other 2 can just stay home but they report 5 cases. The second region tests no one, but has the same (for argument's sake) rate of infection. They only have the 3 people who show up at the hospital for treatment. They don't catch the other 2 because they don't test anyone. Region two then touts that they are doing better because they only have 3 cases where region one has 5.

That's what I'm wondering. The more you test, the more cases you're going to find.

[Art Blade]

in a way yes, and no at the same time.

If two regions handle the pandemic differently, then you can't compare them. Like, the first region A realises early on that there is danger, they tell all people to stay at home, avoid social contacts and to wear masks if they have to leave for say, groceries, and they shut down most of the shops, bars, cinemas, kind of everything really, except what is necessary like a supermarket. And they tell them to get tested only if they know that they had been in contact with a COVID19-infected. If those people test positively, then every contact is traced back, quarantined and tested. Of course people who present themselves in a hospital (and those working there) will be tested. In the end, there won't be extremely many tests and likely not extremely many infections and deaths. They can then start to slowly open up businesses and allow some social contacts, all the while everyone being very careful. So region A is doing well, overall.

The second region B ignored the pandemic for a long time until the hospitals were brimming with severe cases, then they realise something is wrong and start to do random things like testing everyone in a village even though there's no sign of infection, and a city with full hospitals can't test because they had run out of kits and they're desperately trying to get them. Since nobody is taking it seriously, all shops are open and social contacts remain normal. the virus is spreading like crazy and only the hospitals notice and the death count is alarmingly high. If hospitals fail to identify COVID19-related deaths and instead count them as, say, caused by pneumonia, then essentially the whole statistics show very few cases until they realise, oh, might be corona.. and start identifying those deaths correctly, so the statistics show a surprisingly high death count compared to confirmed (living) infected. Once the test kits arrived, in way too small numbers, the testing starts randomly, like "you want one, you get one.. unless we've run out of kits." The result is that a lot of tests are wasted on people who just want to know (without knowing whether or not they had been in contact with an infected) and turn out negative, just a few coincidental cases show up.

So you can't compare A with B to find out whether or not the virus is present, spreading fast or slowing down.. that is only possible with A alone. B isn't representative because of all the randomness. Eventually B will SEEM to catch up identifying infections but that is only because there are so many cases by now that even random tests offer a lot of hits.

Essentially B is the USA and A are countries like New Zealand or Germany. The difference is, there are no binding rules for the whole of the USA. The president is essentially denying the severity of the pandemic and changes his mind on a daily basis and that's why he isn't someone to look up to for guidance or help. So the states decide independently and some are doing better, some worse, and overall it's simply horrible.

In my city with over 1M people living there, there are only 2.6k confirmed cases total, 106 deceased, same number, 106, still active cases. that includes 18 confirmed new cases during the past 7 days. And we're strictly tracing back contacts of infected, we quarantine and test them. No random tests, only if you had contact. So..

1,000,000+ peeps here, and only 106 of them currently contagiously infected. That's not too shabby, I'd say.

[fragger]

Another aspect is how much a country's government offers incentives and financial aid to people to encourage them to stay home. In Australia, the government has done what it can to ease monetary burdens for those who can't w0#k through no fault of their own. Among other things, they have provided a scheme for employers to claim payments to pass on to their employees who have had to be temporarily stood own, and beginning right back in March, they waived the obligations for unemployment benefit recipients (such as monthly reporting of job-seeking efforts) which will remain in effect until mid-July. Those on welfare have also received a boost in their payments, and new recipients whose employers for one reason or another don't qualify for the employer support scheme have likewise received the boost. There have been two major one-off subsistence payments for those who can't w0#k, with another on the way.

As much as I dislike our current PM, I have to admit that his government has stepped up to support those who can't w0#k. In the US, from what I've gathered, there has been very little done in this regard (please correct me if I'm wrong, this is just what I have perceived from afar). There has been just one stimulus cheque issued to those at home (for $1200 USD - I get an equivalent amount every two weeks) and some states' unemployment offices have been overwhelmed and have practically broken down due to insufficient staffing and antiquated processing systems (the computer system in the unemployment office in Kentucky is still running on COBOL, for God's sake - a programming language so outdated that it was on the way out when I studied programming in 1989). The hardware is ancient, the software is obsolete, the personnel are too few, and some states' unemployment departments are trying to cope with a volume of welfare-seekers which they were never equipped to deal with. Or they once were, decades ago, but their systems and procedures haven't been upgraded for donkey's years and are no longer up to the task.

The anti-stay-at-home protests in the US some weeks back was mostly fueled by financial concerns. Yes, there was a component of folks who just didn't like being told what to do and/or saw self-quarantining as an infringement of their basic civil rights, but most of the angst was driven by monetary woe because government financial aid is too paltry, or even non-existent. Newly, and forcibly, unemployed citizens in a country like the USA shouldn't have to wait in queues for hours on end outside unemployment offices, or spend days and days trying to apply over the phone or online without getting anywhere while the bills mount and the money runs out. The "Constitutional Rights infringement" crowd aside, I can understand why people would protest being made to stay at home when they are offered little to no official financial support to encourage them to do so. They've still got to eat and pay their way.

We also have our share of stubborn individualists and malcontents, but we have seen nothing like the anti-quarantine protests which took place in the USA, and in a few other countries, a month or two ago (whenever it was - I lose track of time so easily these days).

In a country which can afford to spend over a trillion dollars on its military, it is unconscionable that such meager support is being offered to its citizens in the middle of what is most assuredly a national crisis. But this is getting a tad political, so I'll stop there.