In the report, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Oxford say other factors, such as ventilation, crowd size, exposure time and whether face coverings are worn, need to be considered, as well.
Well gee wiz… I seem to recall being shot down for suggesting that “6 Feet” was an arbitrary standard, and the effective distancing was dependent on a number of variables… Something about how “the science” had established 6 feet is what’s necessary, or whatnot…
Reduce testing → reduce cases.
Similarly: Add food to bars → no bars → bars open.
Perfectly logical. cromulent.
I’m not familiar with that law but did TX close bars because they’re unsafe to remain open during the pandemic but at the same time, decide that bars that re-qualify themselves as restaurants if they just park a food truck outside? That changes none of the parameters that went into the decision to close them. Why bother with BS like this? Either decide that bars will remain closed or bars can open.
Exactly. Indoor Bars closed. “Restaurants” allowed to open indoors. So bars are just hiring a food truck and now they’re restaurants.
At this point, it’s fair to refer to this as the MAGA Trump virus, no longer as the “China Virus”. The incompetence and uncontrolled outbreaks are no fault of China, they’re direct results of MAGA Trump policy.
If you contend we’re doing the best job and the current situation is acceptable, then at least be proud of it!
Bars where I live (nola) can apply for a temporary restaurant permit, and most are taking the rules seriously and making each customer order food, and stay seated at their own table vs. mingling. These are bars that already have operating kitchens but were licensed as bars.
There are a few college bars that aren’t, and it’s a shitshow- ie a party of 8 ordering a single plate of French fries so they can nurse if for hours while they drink and spread Covid around.
I imagine their regulators will get around to busting them once it’s obvious their sales are less than 50% food, but that sort of thing moves at a glacial pace around here.
Despite all that, our infection and hospitalization numbers are trending down nicely. Too soon to see the effects of school reopening though.
Answer this - how is eating a sandwich any safer than drinking a drink? And isnt the same 8 people sitting at that table for hours much safer than a revolving door of a new 8 people every hour or so? If one of the 8 is positive, they’ve already contaminated things just by walking in the door. But if they’re negative, they’re keeping any number of other potentially positive patrons from taking that seat through the night.
You mention your rates are trending downward. Perhaps there is merit in letting people park themselves for a long time, rather than pushing turnover and forcing those college kids to do multiple things in multiple places in order to “have a night out”…
People constantly ignore this fact when discussing schools, too. Especially grade schools. Those kids are sitting in the same room with the same 18 kids, all day, every day. The fact there are 500 kids in the building is pretty irrelevant to their safety, but it’s all anyone talks about when criticizing schools as being “death traps” or “covid incubators”.
Maybe I wasn’t clear. The bad ones are not sitting at their own table eating and drinking, presumably with their own quarantine group . They’re up wandering around in the bar like business as usual, and bunching up in packs outside close together while smoking. No masks. Our bars also tend to be small and poorly ventilated 
I think our rates are trending down because 95% of bars are closed. Only a handful have reopened under the restaurant exception, and most are following the spirit of the rules.
Maybe I wasnt clear. Isnt it better that they’re all staying put for a long period of time, even if co-mingling with others, than to keep bouncing from place to place doing whatever it is college kids do when they cant just hang out at a bar for the night? At best, they’re going to be doing the same thing at a private residence anyways, with many of the same people even.
True. The house party thing is a big issue too. Ultimately, I can’t really control what other people do.
Trump: “Thanks to advances. We have pioneered the [high] fatality rate.”
And we appear to have… The obvious downside to doing absolutely nothing rather than the federal government mobilizing testing and contact tracing early in the year.
I’d say with less people likely. First the house may not be as large as a bar facility and second, they’d likely only invite a subset of the population of the bar, not every stranger gathered there. And it’s not like a bar is not a fluid environment either with people coming and going.
Ultimately, you cannot easily prevent people from gathering (unless you’re China) and not taking COVID seriously. Short of taking the semester 100% online and sending students packing back home of course. Which may be the outcome anyway if/when things get out of control in terms of infections on a campus.
For our sophomore, we dodged the issue since all her classes are online this semester and she was offered the option of not returning to campus. Made no sense to pay $8k room and board to take classes online from your dorm room with many of the campus facilities closed. Although it’ll be a hassle having a college kid at home too but for $8k per semester, I’ll endure it. 
This one is fresh in my mind (it happened recently), but I’ve heard many reports of the same in other cities.
Just ask the supporters of the 18th amendment. 
My reaction to this is to ask, why were so many asymptomatic kids hospitalized in the first place?
Maybe so their families, relatives, and neighbors didn’t get infected during the quarantine and so people with a new virus with many unknown properties could be monitored and receive help as needed?
How did they know to hospitalize them in the first place, if not sick? It (the article) makes sure to emphasize nearly all of them had no preexisting/compounding factors.
Don’t bother, I’ll answer that for you. Testing! South Korea’s awesome and entirely un-American response was to continually test everyone. So obviously they knew the asymptomatic people. Which begs the question, with such broad testing uncovering the asymptomatic kids, how did they end up with the laughably low count of 91 cases to study? And there were only 22 asymptomatic kids, the rest developed symptoms - so 14 days is in fact what to expect from someone who’s sick, pretty much what we’ve known all along.
I’m not normally down with mass conspiracy theories. But much like this sudden fixation with “percent positive” as the current meaningless metric to base all decisions on, when study after study seems designed to ensure it produces the “right” results (and “timely”, the data is from March yet it coincidentally gets published the exact week most schools start?), something starts to smell fishy.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the concept of just learning to live with the risk. No matter what “experts” want to claim.