Oglem

In NJ you are allowed to go for a drive, even walk in the park, grocery shopping, etc. Not sure if we have an official executive order for stay-at-home though. I think it's more like the gov "strongly suggests" it and has closed non-essential businesses.

1000 units by the end of April is ridiculous and unacceptable. NYC peak is supposed to be before then, and they need more than 1000 additional. Plus who knows how the other hotspots will be faring (FL, New Orleans, LA, etc)

Thanks, that's great to hear.

Right on cue for spring:

Here's something I've been wondering about related to vaccine development (I think I might have asked this before?): I know the idea of covid mutations affecting illness severity is controversial, but it's undisputed that many minor mutations have taken place, allowing us to trace the origin of the virus. My question is if these mutations affect immunity and if they are taken into account in vaccine trials. In other words, when they're conducting the human vaccine trial, do they only vaccinate for one strain? And when they test to see if the humans can be reinfected, will they only test with that one strain? Is it reasonable to expect vaccination against one strain to protect against all, and is this how viruses generally work? (I apologize if this is a stupid question). Do the minor mutations count as different "strains" of covid, just like there are different flu strains? If so, that might lead us to think vaccination against one covid mutation does not protect against all covid mutations. Yet, it could be that the covid mutations are so minor that they don't even affect immunity and don't really set them apart as different strains. I'm also wondering if antibody treatment can generally treat any strain of a virus. If so, that would be a significant benefit of antibody treatment for coronavirus. I also wonder if the studies that showed no reinfection tried to reinfect the monkeys with different mutations of covid or the same strain. Thanks.

Here in Southern NJ, the parks are not as crowded as they usually are, but still a lot of people out there. If anything some of the smaller/lesser-used parks are more crowded than usual because many are avoiding the bigger ones. (This is all by Southern NJ standards though, so still not nearly as crowded as they video you posted)There's a small party/family reunion? going on nearby with like 10-15 people. I'm not sure about basketball games though, I think cities in the area have closed their park's basketball courts.

Interesting, so there seems to be two sides to the Coronavirus vaccine and immunity debate, as I had seen another study posted earlier, I think by wxmd, showing how monkeys couldn't be reinfected with the virus after an initial infection (might not have been a mild infection though, I forgot). There's so many questions/unknowns with this virus. It would be good if vaccines worked and also if you could get treated with antivirals immediately or other treatments, get better with only mild symptoms/mild infection thanks to the treatment, and then have immunity for a long while. It would be disappointing if vaccines and mild-because-treated infections would increase our risk later on. Thanks for the information!

How do you think this could affect vaccines? If vaccination counts as a "mild" infection, then could we be setting ourselves up for worse/severe reinfections?

Initially I was disappointed, but if you read the twitter thread it seems to be a very small study (only 30 people, half were treated half not treated), so we can still hope for HCQ to work until we get a larger study to confirm. The article says that the results are not statistically significant, too.

On the bright side though, even if HCQ turns out to be not very effective, there's still countless other drugs being tested. Hopefully something works soon.

Thanks Fireguy and Mophstymeo, that makes sense.

So is it kind of like "I put all this bad stuff in the bill to match the bad stuff you put in, so once you take out your unnecessary things I'll take out mine"

Wait, if dems didn't intend for that stuff to be passed, why did they put it in there? Genuinely curious, as I want to learn more about how politics/gov negotiating works. Why put something in if it's only going to hold up the bill? Can't you just not draft a bill altogether and achieve the same effect? Thanks.

Wow, that is ridiculous. Why can't we just get a good stimulus bill that supports people? Link: https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-outbreak-03-23-20-intl-hnk/index.html

I agree. I think this could pose a challenge, because what about vulnerable people who can't work from home, or vulnerable people who might feel pressured to go into work if literally everyone else their age is going back to work, or even older people who are strongly connected with younger people (like grandparents caring directly for kids who could now go back to school/play with friends but couldn't for the sake of grandparents), etc. I think a vulnerable/60+ only shutdown might be less effective than a total shutdown because of those things and societal pressures, though I could be wrong here, and clearly the economic effects of a prolonged total shutdown are really scary too. If we see effective treatments, low CFR, and especially a significant flattening of the curve, then maybe a partial shutdown could work without putting those vulnerable at greater risk. Edit: You also have to consider that if we do a total lockdown, there would be less time needed for everyone to stay isolated. Whereas vulnerables and 60+ would probably have to isolate themselves from society for a way longer period of time if we just let the virus run its relatively tame course through the younger and stronger population. Like, imagine the virus keeps spreading but not really killing any younger people for several months, versus maybe 1 month to beat down the virus if we just did a total shutdown. Instead of everyone isolating for a long time, you'd need 60+ and vulnerables to isolate for a REALLY long time. But I get that there are a lot of people who need money, that's why it we need that stimulus bill to help out the people. For now I feel like it's still a little early to be thinking about opening things back up, but there are definitely two reasonable sides to it. The next week will tell us a lot about whether our measures are working.