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You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 Coronavirus / See The Difference Social Distance Makes

See The Difference Social Distance Makes

by Cheryl Rofer|  March 25, 20209:33 pm| 56 Comments

This post is in: COVID-19 Coronavirus, Open Threads, Readership Capture

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I have been thinking about writing another post about modeling the coronavirus epidemic, and one of the things I have wanted is an interactive model, so that people can see for themselves how social distancing helps.

And here it is!

I know most folks here are aware, but it may be revealing to see just how much of a difference social distancing can make.

Martin had a post up today on modeling and will have one tomorrow. I’ll be writing another post too, but for now just check this out.

Open thread!

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Previous Post: « Please Take Care of Yourselves
Next Post: The Pandemic Relief Bill: Nancy Pelosi Still Has Our Backs »

Reader Interactions

56Comments

  1. 1.

    gene108

    March 25, 2020 at 9:43 pm

    Link is to NYT, which requires creating an account to view

  2. 2.

    guachi

    March 25, 2020 at 9:44 pm

    @gene108: Indeed it does but all of their Coronavirus articles are free once you do create an account.

  3. 3.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    March 25, 2020 at 9:50 pm

    @guachi:

    Why doesn’t the NYT just remove the paywall entirely for COVID-19 articles? I don’t want to create an account, even if it’s free. Just another username and password I have to keep track off

    Thanks regardless, Cheryl!

  4. 4.

    Quinerly

    March 25, 2020 at 9:50 pm

    Thanks, Cheryl!

    Much appreciated.

  5. 5.

    West of the Rockies

    March 25, 2020 at 9:51 pm

    The interactive graph/chart is compelling evidence to continue social distancing.  As George Takei would say, “Oh, my…”

  6. 6.

    West of the Rockies

    March 25, 2020 at 9:52 pm

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    I will say that it took less than a minute to create an account.  Easy-peasy.

  7. 7.

    Kent

    March 25, 2020 at 9:54 pm

    @gene108:Link is to NYT, which requires creating an account to view

    If you are on a PC using Chrome, just right-click and open in an incognito window to bypass the paywall.  At least that used to work for me.  Now I have a subscription (through my school) so I can’t test it.

  8. 8.

    Mallard Filmore

    March 25, 2020 at 9:54 pm

    “Another new password to remember” Here is my suggestion:

    _new_up_york_yours_times_

    .

  9. 9.

    Gin & Tonic

    March 25, 2020 at 10:00 pm

    @Kent: It hasn’t worked for a while.

  10. 10.

    Martin

    March 25, 2020 at 10:00 pm

    It really helps a lot. But you have to be serious about it. You can’t run out to the store every day trying to get eggs.

  11. 11.

    Ruckus

    March 25, 2020 at 10:04 pm

    The link wouldn’t work for me, normal or private window.

    It might be that the FTFNYT doesn’t like me. How good is that?

  12. 12.

    Martin

    March 25, 2020 at 10:05 pm

    I just got asked elsewhere if Trump could override governor orders regarding critical businesses like the Gov of MS did to cities. California is shutting off power and water to businesses that refuse to close, so I’m going to say that yes, technically he could, but good luck getting us to turn the power back on.

  13. 13.

    El Cruzado

    March 25, 2020 at 10:06 pm

    For regular article content, Safari’s reader mode will get you the contents without dealing with the paywall overlays.

  14. 14.

    Martin

    March 25, 2020 at 10:07 pm

    Lifetip: Buy 1Password to manage your passwords. It runs on all of your devices syncs between them, and will autofill logins/passwords. It runs locally on your system rather than storing a database out on some server somewhere susceptible to being hacked.

    Worth every penny, I assure you.

  15. 15.

    Timill

    March 25, 2020 at 10:07 pm

    To view articles in the NYT, delete all cookies containing ‘nyt’

  16. 16.

    Mathguy

    March 25, 2020 at 10:09 pm

    CNN just put this out: CDC adviser thinks pandemic will peak in three weeks.  That seems extremely optimistic to me, especially give the lack of testing.

  17. 17.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    March 25, 2020 at 10:10 pm

    @Martin:

    Wouldn’t he have to declare martial law or something insane like that to “override” state governments

    Edit: Not too happy with the Ohio legislature’s decision to only send out postcards to tell people to vote absentee. Not even absentee ballot applications, let alone ballots themselves. Like, would it have been so difficult to print up some ballots and mail them to all registered voters?

  18. 18.

    Kelly

    March 25, 2020 at 10:14 pm

    Roth’s our locally owned grocery chain has online ordering and curbside pickup. Mrs Kelly set up an account today and found the earliest pickup time is Sunday afternoon. We were planning on Monday anyway so not a problem for us. One of the neighbors used Walmart’s similar service yesterday without any delay.

  19. 19.

    kindness

    March 25, 2020 at 10:17 pm

    The chart with the extended social distancing was starting to go up when it ends in October.  What would the chart look like if taken to December or January?

  20. 20.

    dmsilev

    March 25, 2020 at 10:17 pm

    @Mathguy: I think that’s plausible for places that have already gone to shelter-in-place or similar; look at Italy, where the curve is starting to bend over about 2.5 weeks after they clamped down. Of course, Florida etc. will take longer because they’re being led by fuckwits.
    Once we pass the peak, figure another month or two before starting, slowly, to ease back to normal.

  21. 21.

    dmsilev

    March 25, 2020 at 10:20 pm

    Oh, and Josh Marshall at TPM got hold of ridership data for the NYC subway and used that to make the case that New York didn’t really lock itself down until maybe five or so days ago. In other words, they’ve got a long and hard road ahead of them.

  22. 22.

    Elizabelle

    March 25, 2020 at 10:22 pm

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):   There is nothing stopping you from a password like Trumpsucks, etc.  My login and password are rather mean, because I was ticked when the FTF NYTimes established a paywall.  In the early aughts.

    But they’re memorable!

    You will enjoy taking this coronavirus quiz by Gail Collins.  If we’re stuck with Trump, at least we can laugh at him.

  23. 23.

    tam1MI

    March 25, 2020 at 10:24 pm

    OT but everybody needs to be all hands on deck for this:  Rose Twitter has dug up a woman who is claiming that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her.  Her name is Tara Reade.  Be prepared for the Bernie Bros to hand this weapon to Trump to ride all the way into November.  It’s going to be Al Franken all over again.

  24. 24.

    Martin

    March 25, 2020 at 10:24 pm

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): States are generally using the federal rules for ‘critical businesses’, so they’d need to rotate off of that. But a persons authority is only as great as their ability to enforce it (hence the threats), which in CA is zero.

  25. 25.

    hueyplong

    March 25, 2020 at 10:25 pm

    @Mathguy: “CNN just put this out: CDC adviser thinks pandemic will peak in three weeks.”

     

    Maybe they’re just getting Trump past Easter for now, figuring that events themselves will extend it once we get to that three week mark.  They’re dealing with a toddler.

  26. 26.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    March 25, 2020 at 10:27 pm

    @Martin: Last time I looked 1Password was pretty Apple centric, it could be better now.  But, I agree a password manager is essential.

  27. 27.

    Elizabelle

    March 25, 2020 at 10:27 pm

    @Mallard Filmore:  emails_fuckers

  28. 28.

    Martin

    March 25, 2020 at 10:29 pm

    @Mathguy: It’s not even optimism. What’s the mechanism that will cause this?

    I think it’s true in the states that locked down, but what about the others?

  29. 29.

    Fair Economist

    March 25, 2020 at 10:39 pm

    If accurate, that chart looks like intermittent distancing might work. I’ve been thinking we would need to go to milder but still substantial distancing. Not convinced by one mass media model but something to consider.

  30. 30.

    Elizabelle

    March 25, 2020 at 10:39 pm

    You will likely need to use a NYTimes click for this, cuz not sure it’s classified as a coronavirus story — but I enjoyed seeing NY Times readers unload on American Airlines for sticking a hand out for a bailout after using $13 billion on stock buybacks in recent years.  They’re not too thrilled with the “toddler-sized seats,” either.

    Inside American Airlines’ Scramble as Virus Grounds Jets by Hundreds

    Nearly every part of the airline, the largest in the United States, has been transformed, and executives are fighting to keep it afloat.

    On Monday morning, American Airlines Flight 1 departed John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, bound for Los Angeles. It had six passengers.

    … [American] has even changed the way it repairs planes: Instead of buying new parts when they are needed, it is cannibalizing them from some of its hundreds of planes that are parked.

    And it is looking for new sources of revenue. Last week, American started running passenger-free flights loaded with cargo for the first time in 36 years. It is ferrying medical supplies, mail for active U.S. military troops, telecommunications equipment and electronics between Dallas and Frankfurt.

    …. Around the country, American is parking its fleet as fast as it can — there will be 100 planes in Tulsa, Okla.; 100 planes in Roswell, N.M; 50 planes in Pittsburgh; more in Mobile, Ala., and Greensboro, N.C.

    On Thursday, one plane after the next was landing at an American Airlines facility in Tulsa. When a captain walked off a Boeing 777 he had ferried from Miami, he paused on the tarmac and asked the ground crew to take his picture in front of it.

    The crew initially resisted, telling him that there wasn’t time. More planes were landing. The captain insisted. “I’m a year away from retirement,” he said. “I think this is going to be my last flight.”

    The parked planes need to be serviced daily by a team of 10 people. Every day, each plane needs to have its engine run, has to taxi far enough for the tires to rotate fully, and has to have its hydraulics, avionics and electronics checked.

    It’s really a tragedy, every single day.  Thanks, Trump!

    =======

    Anyway:  for reader comments, I like to click on “reader picks” because they’re usually the reasonable ones.

    “All” will get you Foxbots and some some smart people.  “NY Times selected” will be contrarian crap, for the most part.

  31. 31.

    Ruckus

    March 25, 2020 at 10:39 pm

    @El Cruzado:

    Worked like a champ! Thanks!

  32. 32.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    March 25, 2020 at 10:40 pm

    A higher R0 and higher hospitalization rate conspire to wreak havoc. A single person with the flu can result in the infections of 386 other people over two months, and a handful would be hospitalized. But in that same period one Covid-19 patient could lead to the infections of 99,000 people, of whom nearly 20,000 might need to be hospitalized.

    This is the money quote from that NYT article [used Incognito ; ) ]

  33. 33.

    Mathguy

    March 25, 2020 at 10:41 pm

    @Martin: Yeah, it seems implausible. The article is misleading since the the third epidemiologist they quote as “agreeing” simply says we’ll have better idea of what’s happening in three weeks. Like a few others have said, I think we will see a few areas peak because of stricter measures, but Floriduh will be a nightmare.

  34. 34.

    Cheryl Rofer

    March 25, 2020 at 10:43 pm

    @kindness: I will probably talk about that in my later post. Martin might say something about it tomorrow.

    tl;dr: It’s too far ahead, with too many things that might happen, like a vaccine, to be sure. But it is worth thinking about.

  35. 35.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    March 25, 2020 at 10:45 pm

    The grafts they were posting comparing Santa Clara with other infected counties wasn’t speculation like this NYT article but actual documented proof the 44 days of this stuff has a serious effect.  But I know, California, it’s not real American so can’t be done here.

    Meanwhile in two weeks Louisiana caught up to what’s happened in California in three months and Michigan and Georgia are stating to flare up too.

  36. 36.

    Elizabelle

    March 25, 2020 at 10:46 pm

    Here’s the article Lawrence O’Donnell is about to spotlight on his show.  Elmhurst Hospital Center, in Queens.  Worth a read.

    13 Deaths in a Day: An ‘Apocalyptic’ Coronavirus Surge at an N.Y.C. Hospital
    Hospitals in the city are facing the kind of harrowing increases in cases that overwhelmed health care systems in China and Italy.

  37. 37.

    Ruckus

    March 25, 2020 at 10:48 pm

    @Martin:

    1Password site looks nice and they give themselves some pretty glowing accolades but what else makes them worth the whatever?

  38. 38.

    cain

    March 25, 2020 at 10:51 pm

    @Mathguy:

    Calculate 3 weeks, how long till Easter? Easter is in 18 days, 3 weeks is 21 days. Yeah, it will be a shit show regardless if he thinks he can shut it down.

  39. 39.

    JaySinWA

    March 25, 2020 at 11:00 pm

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): You need a password manager. Improves online life quite a bit. I use Lasspass no cost option, but there are several others available for low or no cost

    Or what

    @Martin:

    said.

  40. 40.

    Another Scott

    March 25, 2020 at 11:05 pm

    @Ruckus: A review of it and some others (on Android) is at Android Police.

    HTH.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  41. 41.

    Jinchi

    March 25, 2020 at 11:05 pm

    @gene108: Link is to NYT, which requires creating an account to view

    I was able to view and interact without an account using Firefox in private mode.

  42. 42.

    Askew

    March 25, 2020 at 11:09 pm

    @Ruckus:

    I’ve been using 1pw for at least 5 years now. One of the most appealing aspects is that I can have a copy on my desktop and one on my phone, which I sync directly so that nothing goes into the cloud. Thus, it’s particularly secure and still portable; easy to whip out the phone, plug in the master pw, and then get access to hundreds of stong pw’s. The interface is generally good, though you have to rummage a bit to learn how to sync directly instead of via Dropbox or other cloud venues. Based in Toronto; I’ve found them to be very responsive and helpful when I’ve had questions.

  43. 43.

    Jinchi

    March 25, 2020 at 11:12 pm

    @Elizabelle: “NY Times selected” will be contrarian crap, for the most part.

    I’ve always wondered about that myself. The “NY Times selected” is almost a parody of the NYTimes mindset. But is it an intelligent algorithm that figured out the editors, or is there an actual person selecting those results.

  44. 44.

    Mart

    March 25, 2020 at 11:14 pm

    @tam1MI:  And the guy who wanted to “grab ’em by the pussy, move on her like a bitch” and had affairs with a porn star and Playboy woman while on his third marriage is going to use le affair de Biden to defeat him. Sounds about right.

  45. 45.

    NotMax

    March 25, 2020 at 11:14 pm

    @cain

    Russian Orthodox Easter is the 19th.

    Just sayin’.

    ;)

  46. 46.

    Tazj

    March 25, 2020 at 11:20 pm

    @Elizabelle: What I’m reading from health professionals on social media has left me beside myself. What can we do to pressure the administration to really use the DPA? Will everyone calling the White House do anything? I know Andy Slavitt is talking to people in the administration but does anyone know of anything besides staying at home we can do to help people?

    Everything seems so crazy. Andrew Cuomo is on Twitter thanking different businesses for donating certain supplies but it’s so piecemeal, but what else can he do?
    The hospitals around here (in WNY) aren’t overrun yet and maybe social distancing will help  a lot here (lower density)but I don’t know. The hospital my husband works at has enough PPE for staff but other hospitals might run out soon.

    Someone who knows what they’re  doing and isn’t a monster needs to take charge soon.

  47. 47.

    Ruckus

    March 25, 2020 at 11:27 pm

    Thanks everyone, I am looking at reviews about several, now that my attention has been alerted.

    I have a decent system that I use but it’s cumbersome – mainly because I built it using, how should I put this, non electric, old school methodology. It’s secure to a degree but it is a pain in the butt and that degree of security is not to the level of what’s available. Being on a budget and not having massive needs it seems like Last Pass might be better for me. At least currently I have plenty of time to do things like install a password program…….

  48. 48.

    NotMax

    March 25, 2020 at 11:40 pm

    @Ruckus

    Old reliable (and always free) Password Safe from security guru Bruce Schneier still available for Windows.

    Good read on password managers in general.

    Whatever you do, keep a copy of the master password written down somewhere accessible to you and not on the computer or device in case you forget it. Better yet, in multiple secure places.

  49. 49.

    MisterForkbeard

    March 25, 2020 at 11:41 pm

    @tam1MI: I’m seeing literally zero coverage of it anywhere.

    Doubt it will go anywhere, especially with all the other news going on. Though I’m sure we’ll get lots of True Leftists convincing themselves that Biden is a rapist over the next few months, because that’s what they do.

  50. 50.

    MisterForkbeard

    March 25, 2020 at 11:43 pm

    @NotMax: I use PasswordSafe as well. Excellent, but you need to manually sync password safe files between multiple computers if that’s your deal.

  51. 51.

    Barbara

    March 26, 2020 at 12:02 am

    @Martin: There would have to be a very good argument that a particular business implicates a federal interest. Trump is too lazy to go to that levrl of effort. He is more likely to bellow insults and threaten to cut off federal funding.

  52. 52.

    Ruckus

    March 26, 2020 at 12:33 am

    @NotMax:

    Thanks but I’m an Apple head. After many, many years of microcrap I got tired of their shit after I called them to see how I could remove the non functioning video player that Netflix used to use so I could reinstall it for the tenth or so time and they told me it would cost $20. I told them I had a better fix. I’d take my windows box and let a truck run over it, before I’d pay their asses a fucking dime to remove a non functional free program so that I could reload their crappy free program and that I was leaving to purchase an apple computer. Haven’t looked back and it was a great decision. Apple may be expensive and all that, but my experience with them is very, very good. Also my first computer was an Apple, back in the mid/late 70s. Which also worked like a charm.

  53. 53.

    NotMax

    March 26, 2020 at 1:12 am

    @Ruckus

    Know there is a clone version for OS but nothing about it beyond that it exists.

  54. 54.

    Ruckus

    March 26, 2020 at 1:19 am

    @NotMax:

    Read Schecter’s article that you linked to. You are right it is rather good and also it is thorough .

    Now I’m back to my system isn’t all that bad…..

  55. 55.

    Uncle Cosmo

    March 26, 2020 at 9:29 am

    The fatal (you should pardon the expression) flaw in sequential responses is that the response is always going to lag reality by 2 weeks or more – by the time there’s a significant enough uptick in the number of new cases to justify (re)imposition of (e.g.) social distancing, the case numbers will keep going up for that period. And that is presuming government officials sufficiently dedicated to the common good to take the difficult actions (or inactions) the science indicates. With the utterly unscrupulous bastards running the country (looking at you, Orangecandyass) who will always be putsching & tschoving hard as they can to ease restrictions and always digging in their heels hard as they can against reimposition of same, sequential response is doomed to be sequential failure. I mean, cripes, look at Hong Kong – they thought they had this under control not once but twice & it ran screaming away from them at warp 6.

    Tl; dr version: Sequential response + narcissist POTUS = rolling disaster.

  56. 56.

    J R in WV

    March 26, 2020 at 11:36 am

    @Martin:

    California is shutting off power and water to businesses that refuse to close, so I’m going to say that yes, technically he [Trump] could [order a business to open], but good luck getting us to turn the power back on.

    I like this — I like it a whole lot. The Trump Plague doesn’t mean he gets to tell us what to do…

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