Considering the Federal government ceded its authority to close down America to the states, they also ceded authority to open it up again.
“You can’t sit out a war and expect to ride at the head of a victory parade”
-Trevor Noah
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We still have 7 states in the Midwest which aren’t taking shelter in place seriously. Their state governments are vehemently Pro-Trump and their actions are catastrophic
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Well the first step is figuring out what you need, and it looks like the most critical need is for lots more testing. At this point, unlike a vaccine, that is a matter of logistics. I don’t want to minimize the difficulties in getting more testing out there, but the time frame is probably much shorter than with a vaccine or even effective drugs for treatment.
Of course we also need people to recognize that life will not go back to anything like “the before times,” for a very long time. Unfortunately we won’t be getting that message from the Orange moron in the White House. And something like 25% of the country believes whatever he says implicitly.
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Your argument is a good one and I agree. But if I were one of those ‘rural’ states currently with low incidence, I’d be wondering how I might secure some state borders/airports (however Cnut-like that may prove) and test people on entry - especially those fleeing NY for their rural hideaways (via AirBnB no doubt).
If the Orange Mussolini lets up - and ‘forces’ states to let up - too early, some internal ‘passport’ discussion might ensue. (Not even sure if there’s any precedent or legality to that idea in the US.)
Of course they are. This isn’t the 50’s anymore, the era of single earner/stay at home parent is long gone. I mean technically my wife and I can make it on a single income, but it basically means we won’t be saving anything for college or retirement. So yes, most people with kids depend on daycare and schools to have somewhere for their children to be for a large chunk of their working day.
Because right now I’m juggling working from the office, working from home, schooling one child, and watching the toddler. Our parents are in their 70’s, they have a hard enough time keeping up with both of them on a good day. Throw in a deadly disease…
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38 million tops.
R₀ of 2.8 requires about 80% of the population to be immune to achieve herd immunity. About 15% of those infected seem to require full medical support. The USA population is about 300mil. The medical system once it exceeds capacity will be unable to treat anyone. So 300 mil times 80% times 15% is 38 million or so.
In the real world at a certain point people will ignore him and listen to the local governments, and even if that were not true things like wearing masks may drop the R₀ by a significant amount, which drives down that 80% number. Anything that smears out the infection over time (flattening the curve) also gives the medical system a chance to treat more people before it reaches saturation (death rate more like 0.7% to 3% as opposed to 15%).
It is opt-in form Google & Apple’s point of view. Governments can decide it is mandatory to be allowed out of a house, or work a job or something. If governments don’t do that, individual jobs and stores could.
On the other hand I think it has a significant risk of over-alerting. Like if it reports me as having contact with everyone in bluetooth range, I may have “contact with” someone on the other side of two walls and 12 feet away. If they test positive I’ll be told I have been exposed to someone who tested positive, but not who. Then I’ll end up testing negative. If that happens enough times I’ll be really dragging my feet on getting myself tested like the 7th time or so, and that one could be the important one. (note: I’m not an expert on radio technology, and may be overstating the bluetooth issues…just because my AirPods can talk to my laptop when I’m down a hall, across two rooms, throughout the garage, and halfway down my driveway don’t mean a Bluetooth LE handshake goest that far…but it also doesn’t)
So value of automated contact tracing? Remains to be seen. Guardedly optimistic from me actually, but still guarded.
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this is what Fortune500 was planning, either case it’s going to be a lot of death with the second wave, I mean many states will never go below 50 deaths per day for the rest of the summer
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Only this time starting with an even larger group of asymptomatic carriers…
Yeah, I realized that even in joking, I was working off the optimistic premise that the curve would be flattened long term, that there wouldn’t be that kind of mass infection, but it would follow more or less as it has so far. I.e. that even after things “opened” there’d be some mask-wearing and some social distancing, and when the numbers of infected rose, the blue states at least would get locked down again. (Albeit over and over again for the next year or two, the death toll steadily rising.)
Plus, since apparently the whole thing is going to be anonymized and rely on self-reporting being a confirmed COVID-19 case, I don’t see how it’ll be possible to prevent people from marking themselves as positive when they aren’t. Either because they felt bad for a while and decided they must have had a mild case, or just for driving trollies purposes.
At the same time, a lot of people are going to be positive and not register it for various reasons. Some percentage of the population doesn’t have a phone that will be able to run the app even if they want it, etc. So the data will be bad in terms of false positives and false negatives. As far as contact tracings go, it might be of some value for some purposes, but I can’t imagine it’ll be as good as currently used methods.
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Yes! I sure hope Biden uses it in his campaign, along with a bunch of healthcare providers, daycare providers, grocery store workers and other essential workers saying, “I need a test, where is it?”
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So the Google/Apple thing is an API, not an app that can be interacted with. I know less about the internal working of Android, so I’ll talk about iOS and assume Android has some equivalent technology. On iOS it is pretty easy to gate use of an API on having a specific App Store signed entitlement on the executable and key data files. Something like “this is a legit contract tracking app” signed by Apple, otherwise the API doesn’t work at all. Apple does this with a lot of APIs, as well as locking them behind some sort of externally enforced terms and content control systems (“do you want to let application X use your photos?”). A little more complex, but for sure doable is to make development signs apps with that entitlement (or a related one) use a non-production data source or sink.
So to report being tested positive for COVID-19 you need an app that does it. The app could for example only allow you to report anything if it can scan a specific QR code that basically acts as a passcode. That would be kind of weak as if you could snap a picture of it you can then file all the false reports you like. An app could be constructed that needs to see a code that rolls forward every day, or a code that entangles the ID of the reporter with a secret known by the health agency. Those are all more complex, so may be less likely to be used, at least at first.
I have also heard the NIH was testing with a beta version of the framework an app that would allow anyone to self report a suspected case and contacts would get a “yellow alert” that someone thinks but does not know that they have COVID-19, and a the same app also supports the NIH themselves using the patients phone to report a confirmation of a test as a “red alert”.
I see nothing in Apple’s APIs that show the ability to use multiple databases or attach any “optional information” to the “oh shit list” (not the official name). However that distinction seems so useful that maybe the actual release version of the API will have some sort of support for multiple contact databases or just levels of assurance of infection or something.
It is also possible that I missed it, my ObjC is a little rusty. I haven’t written any ObjC this year 
That is possible. However other countries (or at least one) has mandated proof of this sort of app in order to enter large public areas, and most places of work. In theory nothing would prevent us from doing that, and that “catches” most people. If we wanted people that currently can’t afford a phone (and I have seen a lot of homes people with smart phones, but don’t know if they are “new enough” to run this, or frequently charged) to be able to participate it would be cheaper to buy them one then to lock them up. I mean SF’s COVID-19 emergency shelter in Moscone center isn’t very nice, and I think is a little too tightly packed to actually be safe, but also costs more then a cell phone per week per sheltered spot.
All of that however would require us as a nation, or at least state to have the will to do it. Also some homeless people lack the capacity to keep anything charged even if they had access to power, and others are deeply mistrustful (frequently with reason).
Fortunately contact tracking just like everything else used to keep the effective transition rate of any desires below 1.0 doesn’t have to be 100% perfect in order to provide a benefit.
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I gotta say, I’d have had a lot more respect for the Confederacy if they’d tried to leave the Union in the cause of public health instead of the cause of preserving chattel slavery.
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It appears to be headed towards the professional baseball league. Because I can’t test most of my patients, or my ER staff, or the EMS crews coming into my ER, but hey, let’s get playing baseball!
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Oh, believe me, I understand. As a born-and-bred Southerner, I do understand. I didn’t marry my cousin, I don’t wear overalls, and I have never flown a Confederate battle flag in my life. But let someone hear my Southern accent, and their estimation of my IQ/skill set seems to plummet.
But this was more about governors in connected states trying to do something about the plague in the absence of any federal action. And today, I saw where a lot of midwestern states did the same thing as the Northeastern/West coast governors did. Of course, if you look South… [crickets]
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OMG, that would be the best campaign commercial 
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Try identifying as a “Florida [Wo]Man” (or Keybilly, in my case, handle notwithstanding). Lots and lots of squinty side-eye cast my way upon introduction!
On topic though, our governor, Dimwit DeSantis, is just chomping at the bit to put Florida-da back to work and bring all the beach goers back bringing the mighty tourist dollar home. My hope is that the bridge to the mainland (US1 “Overseas Highway” connecting to the Keys) remain CLOSED to non-essential traffic including tourists and to Miami! DeSantis is a lap dog to tRump and wants to please his master by declaring his Winter Palace (Mar-a-Lago) ready for golf!
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