Peon Awesome

I suppose a 5th? We save $10 million by trading him compared to cutting him if we really don't want him on the team. Let's say your 3rd round pick turns into a decent starter. What's the cap savings in being able to get a starter for 4 years for $1 million per year compared to a league average veteran at the position? Let's say it's a starting cornerback. You'd be paying a comparable veteran $8 million per year, easy. Same goes for a position like defensive end, wide receiver, most of the offensive line; all positions where a good GM can usually find a potential starter in the 3rd. So to save $10 million on Teddy's contract, you give up a potential savings of $30 million or more. Obviously the later you pick, the less likely you are to pick a decent starter caliber player, which is why a later round pick might make sense. If we believe in the combination of Rhule and Fitterer, no way am I considering a 3rd, and even a 4th is a tough decision. 5th or lower and I'd be down. Otherwise, you accept the lumps of having a pricy but high end backup and mentor for your rookie, trust in your drafting and cut him in 2022.

I wouldn't call us cap strapped this year. Our cap situation is very much league average and considering the cap is expected to decrease considerably this year, we're doing pretty good. We will almost certainly clear probably another $15-20 million in no-brainer cuts. We could in theory be big time free agent spenders by getting creative with our current contracts, shuffling money around and pushing a cap nightmare into the future like the situation the Saints are in. But why? Just resign Moton, get some modest priced free agents to round out the roster and draft well this year and we'll be good.

No I agree. I don't think Houston takes that at all. I'm saying that's what I'd be comfortable giving up so that we still have enough draft capital to build around Watson and make sure we don't turn into the 2020 Texans and have to give up a top 5 2021 pick to them. Watson is worth more than my offer. Just wouldn't necessarily make sense to me to give up more knowing how much we're missing on this team (entire O line, multiple defensive starters, etc).

If you're the Dolphins, how do you not at least offer Tua, #3 and next year's #1 for Watson? And if you're the Panthers, how do you outbid that without completely ruining your chances of building a complete team? In the off chance Miami decides not to offer a trade and Watson decides he would refuse a trade to the Jets, maybe there's an offer that could make sense. I like Teddy, the 8th pick, and an extra 1 and 2 as my max offer. Or if they don't want Teddy, you can leave him out. But since we're paying his signing bonus, you're talking about a mediocre bridge for whoever they draft at 8 for like $17 million that they can cut with no dead cap.

OK fine. I'll even try to minimize using much hindsight and even pretend like I don't have the tremendous resources and information at my fingertips in the early parts of the pandemic that the president had, instead limiting to what was widely known and available to the public. So how about start by not treating it like it was nothing and simply going to go away immediately, instead giving a clear message to the public that this was a serious virus that required vigilance, frequent hand washing, avoiding of high risk behaviors. That way, when scientists and politicians start making recommendations to slow the spread, people don't assume it's just an overblown hoax attempting solely to infringe on our liberties and do the exact opposite. Let's not forget before the US started shutting down, we had already seen thousands dying in Italy with whole hospital systems getting overrun, even if you want to discount China's problems for a month or two before. The US had the benefit of being one of the last industrialized nations to get hit hard and failed to take full advantage of learning from the rest of the world's experience. Now subsequently when it became public knowledge that masks were vital to slowing the spread, he should have stressed how important they were rather than treating them like a political statement and sign of weakness. Words matter. Many people for better or worse trust the president over scientists and physicians. His rhetoric led people to go against the very measures that other countries have taken to get the numbers down to highly manageable levels. Even if we missed a bigger opportunity by wearing masks in March, if he stopped the bleeding by reiterating CDC guidelines in April about how important they were, it would have made an enormous difference. And if that's all he did, he would have helped save several tens of thousands of lives and many more hospitalizations already. But beyond words, which is such low hanging fruit, I would have directed millions in federal funding upfront to get PPE and testing supplies (e.g. swabs, reagents, etc) to hospitals around the country, and encouraged manufacturers to ramp up production far sooner. Again we played a ton of catch up. And with a virus that has potential for exponential spread, even a couple days make a huge difference. There's no reason hospitals should have been running out of masks for the first 3 weeks when we knew how bad the virus was months earlier. Similarly it took forever to get testing so people were running around with the virus unbeknowst to anyone, spreading it far and wide. And perhaps it would've helped us recognize and achieve these things if Trump's administration hadn't dismantled the pandemic response team. Listen, Trump isn't the only person who made mistakes. The CDC, even Dr. Fauci screwed up at points of time. The difference is, they typically acknowledge their mistakes and try to correct them. Trump doubles down repeatedly until the truth is so far in his face, he's literally one of the last people to acknowledge it. Plus as the president, he ultimately bears the most responsibilty whether that's fair or not. He got dealt an unlucky hand to be president during one of the worst public health crises we've ever faced. But he was elected to lead us through whatever problem came our way. He doesn't get to throw his hands up and say "Man this is hard. Tough luck America!" I admit, even if he handled this amazing well, it doesn't mean people wouldn't have died or our economy wouldn't have been severely affected. But the above measures are very simple things well within the president's purview that would've made a big difference and put us in better shape than we are now, similar to the position the vast majority of countries around the world are in. And I'm no public policy expert or epidemiologist so you could get a much better and more complete answer elsewhere. But these are some no brainers that require little hindsight.

How much do you have to be grasping at straws to defend Trump when your argument is "Well H1N1 wasn't as bad as it could have been!" It doesn't make Trump's disastrous handling of COVID suddenly good. Sorry man. This very weak version of whataboutism is incredibly sad. As far as ICUs, I think your study supports my point far more than yours. So ICUs at their busiest are around 80% and on average in the 60s. July is one of the least busy times of the year, but let's just throw you a bone since you need help and assume Miami was going into their absolute busiest season by chance. And then realize jumping from 80% to 120% is a damn big deal. We're saying the ICUs are used to being somewhere between half to 2/3 as full as they are now. For good measure, our hospital system's most recent numbers show us at 70% ICU capacity and we're doing all of our elective surgeries. And cases in NC have been hitting record levels. So for Miami to be that overrun in comparison just shows how bad things are. And they're not the only one. Several hospital systems throughout the country are panicking about potentially exceeding available resources. Finally, I completely stand by my point about elective surgeries not having an appreciable effect on ICU bed occupancy. I'll take my experience working on the frontlines in the hospital approaching 10 years over your N of 1 case of your dad. Long invasive surgeries ending in the ICU, sure not crazy. The number of elective surgeries that qualify as that are quite low. Elective surgeries are far far more likely to be same day or next morning discharges. And finally what's the point of the CDC's political contributions? They don't make up the numbers. Hospitals report them and they publish them. And of course more of their contributions go to democrats. Scientists and well educated people in general lean democratic. It probably doesn't help the Republican party that they often ignore or downright deny science in many cases. Either way, it's more grasping at straws rather than facing the cold hard truth that we are not handing the COVID situation well compared to much of the rest of the world. Instead of pointing fingers and making excuses, we'd be better served to actually acknowledge that the problem exists and do something about it. But that doesn't seem to be this administration's preferred strategy and people like you let them get away with it rather than demand they do better when we deserve that much.

It seems pretty clear you enjoy parrotting the inane talking points of the president, which I guess is why he does it. Yeah let's break from the rest of the world despite having the highest number of cases by far and stop tracking a highly virulent disease which helps identify outbreaks and control spread, as well as gives information on the safety of gradual opening of business and reduces the risk of overwhelming health care systems. And let's pretend because we stopped hypermonitoring H1N1 cases after a few months, a disease that was far less deadly and debilitating, that it's perfectly justifiable to do that for COVID. Just look how almost step by step the world is treating COVID like they did H1N1, huh? Even if you think that it wasn't the best decision to stop meticulously tracking H1N1, it would in no way excuse not closely tracking COVID now. Even Trump is trying to say it was terrible that they stopped tracking it. So he must acknowledge that if the US would stop tracking COVID now, it must be damn near criminal. Look we get it. It's embarrassing for Trump how bad our numbers look compared to the rest of the world and I'm sure for his contingent of die-hard fans, nothing would be nicer than pretending the numbers don't exist. But sometimes the greater good and the interest of public health should be considered more important than the president's ego, as crazy as that might sound.

What's your point? No one said every patient has COVID. But in the absence of COVID, cities are almost never pushing their total ICU capacity. Also, I don't know why you mentioned elective surgeries. The number of patients admitted to the ICU after an elective surgery is close to zero. Pretty much only happens when the surgeon makes a serious mistake or there's an unforeseen complication. Has nothing to do with the situation they're in. I also suspect many Miami hospitals will be shutting that down at this point if they haven't already since COVID is taking all of their resources. Also why minimize the situation in Florida because it's not every hospital in the state? Good for them. I'm sure New York was patting themselves on the back in March when tens of thousands of people were "only" dying in New York City. No one is being unfairly critical here. Florida is one of the world's current epicenters for the virus and there's not a lot of sugar coating you can do with that. And before you start celebrating that not every hospital is pushing capacity, give it some time. That's how viruses work. They spread from one person and place to another.

Don't take this the wrong way because I'm legitimately curious about a couple things. 1. Where are you gathering your information regarding the state of medical education to judge the validity of a medical doctor's opinion? Do you audit medical school programs as part of your profession and have firsthand witnessed the decline in their training quality? 2. What is your opinion of what qualifies as "lately"? Because the divide is largely centered on the opinion of Dr. Fauci vs Donald Trump. Fauci is 79 years old and graduated medical school in 1966. 3. What do you mean by a doctor paying for his degree? Are you suggesting that you can buy a medical diploma and that it isn't one of, if not the most competitive graduate program to get into in the United States? Also, do you discount the several years of residency training required (where you are getting paid, not doing the paying), working upwards of 80 hour weeks where you have to demonstrate competence before you can independently practice medicine? I'm not saying all doctors' opinions should be revered without question. But if I have a question about trash, I'll ask a trashman and if I have a question about a virus, you bet I'm going to ask an Infectious Disease specialist. But that's me personally. Some have called me unconventional.

It's strange that you still don't understand. I am rendering judgement based on the results we already have today. Those numbers already demonstrate failure. They don't have to get any worse for that to be true. Which is the point. Like I said the final results might make him a bigger failure but there's no scenario at this point that would make his handling free of significant criticism. Your argument would make sense if I said months ago when De Santis first allowed everything to open up that he failed. That is not where we are. The fact that anyone is going to defend his handling when the state is in disarray confuses me. But you're entitled to your opinion if you think he's handling it well or that there's a scenario where he'll be proven to have made the right decision. We'll just have to disagree which is fine. But let's stop harping on some misguided interpretation of my words.

You seem to be twisting my words and sentiment. I never said I didn't care how many people die. I said the exact number wouldn't change my opinion that he's acted foolishly and bungled the state's response thus far. I firmly stand by that. Theoretically it could sway just how monumentally terrible his leadership with regards to the virus will turn out to be but either way it's bad. But as I was saying, even if it turns out to be less bad than the worst projections, I'm not going to say he handled it well. Because that would be dismissing the thousands of people that end up in ICUs and die which could have been avoided if he actually took it seriously. https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/07/09/florida-adds-record-high-120-coronavirus-deaths-411-hospitalizations-on-thursday/ The numbers are staggering. Over 400 newly hospitalized in 1 day. That's like transferring half of all of North Carolina's hospitalized COVID patients to Florida's already busy numbers in a single day. A record 120 dead in 1 day; recall that a record number of new hospitalizations today should translate to record deaths in about 4 weeks and realize we're just getting started. My follow-up point, trying to meet you halfway, was in response to your New York comment. I said I'm willing to concede the possibility it might not get quite to New York's level and said we could revisit that in 2-3 months to throw you a bone. But my point being it shouldn't matter when deciding that de Santis screwed up. But why? Other than the fact that it minimizes all the people who will end up in the ICU and/or die. No situation should ever rival New York City. The largest city in the country, one of the most densely populated in the world and a population dependent on crammed public transportation at a time when nobody was appreciating the threat of the virus, wearing masks or social distancing. And we didn't know the best way to treat patients and were doing therapies that we now know are not helpful or possibly even dangerous, without the availability of treatments with some proven benefit like remdesvir. Who could now replicate that scenario? Miami and Tampa are by far the hardest hit in Florida and they combine to make up about 10% of NYC's population. And now we know so much about the virus, how to slow it down and how to monitor and treat it. If your threshold is that it doesn't get as bad as early New York, that's a very sad bar. The fact that we can even entertain the possibility of that debate as it relates to Florida is even sadder. So yes to my very original point that started this back and forth, if de Santis thought the important message to the media is that they weren't as bad as New York and using that as justification for his handling of the virus, then he's a fool. If Roy Cooper was asked about our hospitalizations, which probably were at worst not much different than Florida's when de Santis gave that soundbite and said "Listen we've been in phase 2 for 7 weeks and we're nowhere close to New York. Get off my ass!" I'd say he was a damn fool too. But instead he's consistently said we need to be careful, wear masks and socially distance so we don't move backward. That's the difference.

Well in all honesty, I barely know the guy. I find his disregard for the virus appalling and his responses foolish. Hell, he could be incredible in every other regard but I wouldn't know. I don't spend much time in local politics outside of my own jurisidiction. I focus on him because I think it's an example for what our own leaders should avoid with regards to handling the virus. Unfortunately his COVID rhetoric matches those of some within the NC legislature, so all the more reason to call it out. It's hard to argue that his handling of COVID thus far has been commendable. I'm willing to give it some time if you think things might get better sooner rather than later and admit I was wrong. But I'm reasonably confident that won't be the case.

I guess technically you're right at this exact moment. But if Florida ends up with the 2nd most deaths in the country when all is said and done (which is looking like a distinct possibility), the take away is "Gotta hand it to De Santis. He was right!" I would also suggest better criteria for becoming the next New York would be overwhelming their hospitals' capacity to take care of COVID patients rather than having the exact number of deaths, which controls for things like improvements in care, as well as differences in health disparaties and population density. They are pretty much there, if not will be soon at this rate, with a large number of ICUs there at capacity and hospitalizations only rising (or I mean we can only presume with Florida suspiciously cagey with their data). Regardless of specific outcomes, he already looks like a fool to me. At this point its just how bad will it get. But I'd be happy to revisit this thread in 3 months.

You're right. NC isn't a hotspot right now. And our goal is not to become one. The cases steadily rising though requires us to keep our guard up. Don't forget that we've only been in phase 2 for a month and a half and it can take a couple weeks from exposure to hospitalization. We certainly could be worse, but we also shouldn't be high fiving and patting ourselves on the back for setting records for number of hospitalizations without a clear end in sight. Recently saw a video of Ron de Santis from a few weeks ago boasting defiantly how Florida had been open for weeks and were not seeing many cases. How everyone said their hospitals would get overwhelmed but they were wrong. Looks incredibly foolish now. The problem is if we ignore the trends and loosen all restrictions, the virus can and likely will spread exponentially and we'll join the ranks of Florida, Texas, and Arizona. I don't think we will because to this point, Roy Cooper has been following medical advice and holding off on opening the major niduses for spread like bars. But he's getting heavily opposed from the NC legislature and at some point the pressure may become too much. Guess we'll see.

For those asking about SC hospitalizations (taken from the SC department of health website): 7/7: 1324 7/6: 1260 7/5: 1251 7/4: 1190 7/3: 1148 7/2: 1125 5 straight days of steady increases with 200 more people hospitalized in less than a week. That's actually pretty staggering. And we still have the effect of 4th of July weekend to come.

In theory you could argue for this but in practice this isn't feasible or advisable for several reasons. 1) How do you ensure only young people get infected? They'd be congregating in groves, spreading the virus everywhere except where any elderly people might be? Elderly people wearing masks isn't going to protect them. The young people need to be wearing the masks for the elderly to avoid infection and then that would reduce your herd immunity plan. And elderly people are going to have a tough time avoiding all young people; at grocery stores, pharmacies, both other shoppers and the people at the register would pose a risk. 2. People are still forgetting that no one can say definitively that exposure = long-lasting immunity. It's possible people could fully recover from the infection and get infected again fairly quickly (although this seems less likely). But what's highly possible is they could recover from one infection and then 6 months later, the virus has undergone enough antigenic shift for them to get reinfected again by a slightly different version. So instead of having 1 huge peak, you have 2. And then you've also gotten a couple hundred million people infected with little benefit. 3. While young people are less likely to have severe disease, they're not immune from it. According to the CDC's latest published numbers, there are about 1,000 people under the age of 35 who have died from COVID in the US. Extend the age range to 44 and younger and it becomes 3,000 people. And that's highly unlikely to be enough to achieve herd immunity. Plus are you going to tell a 50 year old executive at his company to bunker down for 6 months? Cause add those 54 and younger and you're approaching 10,000 deaths. Now multiply those numbers by 10 since perhaps at most 10% of people have been infected so far. Now you'll have something close to 100,000 dead. And since a much higher percentage need hospitalization, let's say you've got 2 million or more hospitalized. Also recall that it's the 30 year olds who often are uninsured, no longer qualifying for their parents insurance, now many unemployed due to COVID without employer insurance or choose not to pay the high premiums since they've always been healthy. Now you've doomed hundreds of thousands of people to financial ruin with their insane hospital bills, stifling their economic contribution for decades. Look I don't know the right answer. Ideally we get an effective vaccine in 5 months, get everyone vaccinated over the following 3 months, and attempt to open up fully by next spring. Is that being highly optimistic? Yeah. Is it impossible? There have been no indications thus far that it is. And if there's a chance we can achieve that, we should hold the course until we know for sure that's an impossibility. Cause I'd rather function at 50% capacity with masks for another 8 or 9 months than commit over hundreds of thousands more to death and financial ruin who could otherwise avoid it. And if it becomes clearer a vaccine is not anywhere close, we can pursue other avenues.

I'd be willing to address the points made in the video. First let's take that doctor's point that many of these people have other medical problems that made them more susceptible to dying after getting COVID. That's already well known. People with health conditions like diabetes and heart disease are more likely to die if they get infected with COVID than a young person with no medical problems. But people with diabetes don't just randomly develop respiratory failure that kills them. If they never got COVID, they wouldn't have died then. It's that simple. And he loses me by bringing up people dying with flu and pneumonia. Remember how people quote that up to 60,000 people die of flu in the US? How does he think those deaths get counted? The flu virus takes an axe and chops their body up? Those people also had other medical conditions. How about people who die of cancer? The cancer may not have specifically did them in but it was the primary insult. This is the convention of how deaths are counted for any disease. There's no special conspiracy to change criteria for COVID. On the death certificate you have to decide what was the principle insult. In the case of COVID, people die of respiratory failure, heart failure, blood clots, kidney failure. All these things happen due to effect of the virus on the body and those whose organs are already affected by other medical problems have less reserve to survive those effects. That's how it works. The above also applies to the woman saying we are more liberal in counting our deaths than other countries. If true (which I doubt outside of shady places like China and Russia), that's more of a poor reflection of those other countries. As I alluded to, if you get COVID and it causes your kidneys to fail and you die, you're telling me we shouldn't list that as a COVID related death? If due to the pathologic coagulation associated with COVID you get multiple blood clots into your lungs and die, we should pretend like COVID wasn't the primary underlying cause of death? If we did that, we would be misleading the public in the other direction. Again the basic point is if those people never got COVID, they wouldn't have died like that. COVID can kill you in more than one way. Attributing the cause of death as one of the ways COVID can kill you but leaving out COVID altogether would be terribly disingenuous. As far as hospitals getting paid more for COVID patients on ventilators, of course that's true. It costs a ton of money to care for them. Not only the additional nursing and respiratory therapy care but all the PPE all the team members have to utilize. Also intubation is associated with higher rates of other medical complications in COVID like kidney failure that costs much more to treat. If we didn't charge more we would go into bankruptcy even faster. You have to cover your costs. That's another stupid thing to point out. Our hospital reported losses of several hundred million dollars related to COVID. It's going to take us a long time just to break even. But sure, we are using COVID as our cash cow. The Cook county health commissioner, that one was a head scratcher so I had to investigate. Not sure when that video was taken, but here's an article from May saying the opposite: https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/coronavirus/dr-ngozi-ezike-refutes-notion-that-illinois-is-over-counting-covid-19-deaths/2270810/ Maybe she realized her error and went back to correct it, but the point is, the current data is accurate. She even brings up the point that they likely undercounted cases from February and March when they didn't know as much about the virus and weren't testing as much. And finally as far as New York counting presumed deaths, our infectious disease chief showed us data that demonstrated that New York probably still underestimated by several thousand deaths. They used a model that showed how many people would be expected to die in a normal year factoring in ages and density of medical problems like kidney disease and diabetes and the actual deaths exceeded that by around 10,000. Don't forget that there was so little testing in the beginning. People were dying left and right in nursing homes out of the blue. In a city as huge as New York, 3000 some deaths they didn't get to test is a conservative estimate. Is the system perfect? No. Could there have been some people who died, had COVID, and their death had little to do with COVID? I can say at my hospital, I haven't seen that whatsoever. And as I demonstrated above, even the one publicized report of that was later refuted. But I'm willing to concede among 130,000+ deaths, there could theoretically be a small number of those that fall through the cracks. But there are undoubtedly people in March before we had enough testing who also died and never got tested and never got added to the totals. So I doubt the true number is much different, and in fact, is just as likely, if not more, to be higher than the published number. Even if you wanted to be ultra conservative and say the numbers are a bit off, is 120,000 bona fide COVID deaths and counting something to sneeze at and assume it's all an overblown hoax? At this point what is even the point of this? Hardly anyone is advocating for shutting down again. People are just suggesting we need to wear masks and social distance when we can. Do you think that's part of some liberal agenda to control people by inserting mind control chips in everyone's masks? What does anyone else get out of people wearing masks? Just do your part and we can keep the country running.

Yeah the way it was handled wasn't good but the issue is far more convoluted than it's being presented. Let's start with a fact that hasn't changed a lot from the beginning. Masks aren't great in and of themselves for protecting the wearer from the virus. The biggest benefit is protecting others from you particularly since there are people with minimal symptoms that can spread the virus. So now let's go back to late February/early March when there were very few known cases in the US and people are being told that it wasn't necessary to wear masks if you have no symptoms. That's because the chance you had the virus with no symptoms was pretty low for the most part, particularly outside of the couple major hotspots like New York. So the benefit had to be weighed against the risk of people buying out masks and there not being enough in hospitals where there were bona fide COVID cases. I can attest in our hospital, we were rationing masks the first few weeks or so at least, having to wear the same mask for 5 days straight. Doctors were getting COVID because they couldn't be properly protected. The recommendations were presented with that in mind: masks had marginal benefit to the general public but tremendous benefit to health care workers. All that being said, the situation was still undoubtedly bungled. The explanation for why widespread masks weren't being recommended needed to be clear. Instead it was presented like masks were just generally worthless. They could have made the recommendation from day 1 to use cloth masks, advising people of the need to reserve N95s and surgical masks for the hospital while still curtailing community spread from the very beginning. Second, the recommendation to start wearing masks universally needed to come much sooner. We were being reactive instead of proactive. We shouldn't have waited until we were getting widespread outbreaks throughout the country before we started stressing the importance of mask wearing. At that point, you've let thousands more get needlessly sick or die. All that being said, the recommendations are coming out almost universally for masks outside of Trump and some alt right fringe sites. Republicans nationwide that aren't completely up Trump's ass (and even some who are) are urging people to wear masks. It's become a bit silly to make an excuse for it now regardless of how much they messed up the handling up front.

Asheville does have a lot of breweries with at least a reasonable amount of outdoor seating. Wicked Weed, Burial, New Belgium, Asheville Brewing, Bhramari, Sierra Nevada, Funkatorium, among several others I'm sure. Not sure how/if they are operating; I think if they have some food options, they can potentially get away with being open during phase 2. I guess technically they also double as "retail" since they sell their beers to go on site. Haven't quite figured out all the stipulations but I know there are at least some breweries near me open.

The park thing doesn't necessarily make sense to me either although I'd be willing to hear the rationale for it and could be swayed if it's convincing enough. But as far as why not open everything, I don't agree with that necessarily. The big ticket items that are closed in NC are gyms and bars. I get that. In a bar, people are talking loudly over music, can't realistically stay masked with having to drink their drinks and the whole environment is built around close social interaction. Now I can see certain bars that have spacious outdoor seating being able to get by, but that's how many bars, 1%? Doesn't move the needle much. If they wanted to allow bars that could do outdoor seating only and maintain 6 feet with patrons, that makes sense. But you'd still have 99% of bar owners pissed they can't meet those kinds of requirements. As far as gyms, there is frequent touching of surfaces by dozens of different people. Regular handwashing is inconvenient and impractical. Are you going to wash hands in between every set, then walk back and find someone else using your equipment? People don't like wearing masks walking in the grocery store. How many want to wear one while running on the treadmill? The videos of people fighting gym staff over mask requirements is going to overwhelm social media more than anything we're seeing now. Now are both of those things feasible if we have things under better control? Perhaps. That's why in North Carolina they would be open in phase 3. When cases aren't exploding and half of the people aren't presumed to be actively infected, maybe you have a fighting chance with social distancing measures and frequent sanitation efforts limiting the potential explosion of cases. It's still risky and you could argue against it even until we have an effective vaccine but at least you can have the conversation about it. Until things are under control though, you're just adding another variable to allow things to spiral much worse like we're seeing in Texas and Florida

Perhaps you mean why is Hawaii doing better than other states in spite of Trump? Listen, we get it, New Zealand had an advantage by being a smaller island nation and with that advantage, they mounted a remarkable response. The US required a monumental effort with the strongest and most effective leadership to get a fraction of those results and they failed spectacularly on many levels due to inept leaders and Americans working against their self interests. You elect your leaders to rise to the occasion for whatever challenges get thrown your way. New Zealand did and the US didn't. Let's put it in terms you might understand. New Zealand is like a white person born with privilege that grew up to become a wildly successful businessman. It didn't mean they didn't have to work for it or have lots of smarts and drive. But if you find their response not commendable then you probably should also invalidate the accomplishments of anyone born white, into wealth, or with any other distinction that gave them some leg up over others.

It's possible you are referring to my post since there was mention of 4-5 weeks in there and if so you may have misunderstood me. I mentioned the lag time from cases to deaths is about 3 weeks but followed that up to say if cases keep doubling every week in Florida, the deaths are going to look even worse in 4-5 weeks. I wasn't saying it takes 4-5 weeks for cases to translate to deaths. I haven't read every single post in this million page thread so if you were referring to someone else's post, I apologize.

You'll have to first explain how a trend in the right direction would take us from 128,000 deaths to 1 million.

Yeah the message may be starting to click. We still have a ways to go, but when republican governors (e.g. Texas) are begging their citizens to wear a mask and social distance, some people are starting to figure out it's not a matter of politics, but a matter of sheer ignorance.

Few points: 1. Florida is entering a frightening trend in the last week or so, with no end in sight. That's what we should be worrying about and focusing on. Does it really matter how much worse it is than New York? If New York is doing just as terribly (which it isn't), it doesn't make Florida's situation any better or less scary or demanding any less urgency to correct. Trying to focus the conversation away from that point is counterproductive. 2. The links you posted actually demonstrate the stark difference in trends well. New York's new cases has dwindled down and stayed down for weeks while Florida's has shot way, way up. 3. Notice I didn't mention deaths, which while Florida has more, it's not as striking as the new cases. I know you tried to reference the similar deaths earlier when implying the states are in similar situations. Time of infection to death is often 3 weeks or so. It's only been in the last week that cases started erupting in Florida. So it'll be another 2 weeks before the deaths even start translating. And if cases keep doubling every week like they have been, then it's going to be even scarier 4 or 5 weeks from now. We should circle back around and put the deaths side by side a month from now and see how you feel about it. 4. New York had lots of cases before most anyone was taking COVID seriously and there was little to no testing available in the US. They're an international hot spot; thousands of people from overseas, including contacts through China and other COVID epicenters, were making their way into NYC back when our leadership was acting like COVID was nothing and wouldn't hit the US beyond a dozen cases or so. No testing and no guidelines for social distancing and mask usage in a city that is so densely packed made an environment ripe for mass spread. Meanwhile, the world has known about the dangers of COVID for months and the need for social distancing and mask usage has been spread far and wide. Despite that, Florida (among others) is seeing frightening exponential growth. To say both deserve equal blame for mishandling the situation, although while admittedly not the important thing to focus on, is also inaccurate. That's not to say New York couldn't have done better or that Florida didn't make any effort. But equating the two situations is painting quite a selective brush.