LinvilleGorge

Find me a highly infectious novel respiratory disease that just petered out without a second wave. I honestly don't think it exists. It's wishful thinking. The Spanish flu in the late nineteen teens, the Hong Kong flu of the late 60s, and H1N1 in the late '00s all had second waves that were worse than the first.

I think a lot of people are blind to the fact that we haven't seen the worst of this yet. This spring was an appetizer for the main course that's coming. Just think about it. Coronaviruses are historically largely seasonal diseases. They're a lot less contagious in warmer temps. A natural tailing off of the pandemic over the summer is largely to be expected. The problem is that we've hit over 1.6M cases starting in late January at zero. Sure, it's possibly that small numbers of largely secluded cases existed before then, but for all practical purposes we started in late January. That's halftime of cold/flu season. This coming fall, we'll be starting at opening kickoff and we won't be starting with a score of zero. We'll be starting with COVID having a solid foothold across the country. Even in the best case scenarios, there won't be a vaccine available in meaningful quantities when cold and flu season starts to ramp up next year. Our only defense is going to again be social distancing and likely local sheltering in place as outbreaks pop up. We'll need a lot better testing and contract tracing programs for those efforts to be successful. Hopefully toward halftime of next cold/flu season we'll start seeing a vaccine supply sufficient for widespread vaccination of vulnerable populations but for all intents and purposes we're likely looking at dealing with a full cold/flu season of COVID before we have widespread vaccine access. That's why I just shake my head when I see all those economic predictions prefaced with "assuming there isn't a second wave..." That's like basing economic predictions on winning the lottery. It's completely unrealistic and just sets you up for total failure.

Alright, let's try again...

Not sure which part of this isn't a catch all "Tinderbox on the main forum" thread y'all didn't understand.

There's hardly a night out of the year that we don't get down to the mid-upper 40s here.

Really mild for Charlotte spring is still generally pretty warm for COVID. Multiple studies have concluded that the optimum temperature for transmission is in the mid-upper 40s.

This disease is a lot less contagious is warmer temps. They don't want to come out and flat out announce that because people act dumb enough already.

Politics is a Tinderbox topic. This thread constantly plays in a gray area, but it's a topic we'd like to keep on the main forum. This isn't a thread about voting and there won't be a thread about voting outside of the Tinderbox.

I guess the soft warning didn't work. The next comment about voting = 24 hour ban.

Alright enough about voting. This is a COVID thread, not a catch all thread to sneak Tinderbox topics into the main forum.

Yeah, I've spent almost the entirety of my adult voting life in Colorado. I've actually never physically voted at a polling place. I've always done a mail-in ballot. The concept of having to go somewhere to vote seems absurd to me given my experience as a voter.

You can when the second wave is a tsunami.

I just chuckle when I see this "assuming there's not a second wave" stuff. Folks... the second wave in the fall isn't an odds thing. It's inevitable. IT WILL HAPPEN. It'll be worse because it'll start at the very beginning of cold/flu season, not in late January halfway through cold/flu season. And it'll be starting with a good foothold, not from zero cases. Everyone should wrap their minds around this right now. I'm just concerned that dumbasses are going to be shocked by this when it happens and there's going to be pandemonium when this poo comes roaring back in the fall. It's going to happen.

I have serious issues with both the Republican and Democratic party lines, so any pure party line party before anything else politician can just fug right the fug off as far as I'm concerned.

Where? In America. So a 13% increase in death rate doesn't seem at all alarming to you? Given the reality that Georgia has already been caught blatantly falsifying their COVID data, do you really trust their numbers? Despite the rampant conspiracy theories of inflated numbers, the majority of actual medical experts believe that the numbers are almost certainly off on the low side.

My point is that it's still happening. It seems as if a lot of the "open up now" crowd doesn't think that the death toll warrants our action and may not realize we're still seeing 1000 people die a day from this.

I wonder if people realize we're still seeing roughly 1000 deaths per day due to COVID? We'll be over 100k early next week. As for Trump and Pelosi... honestly, I wish both of them would just go away.

You'll very rarely find me defending Trump, but even Trump has stated his disagreement with how fast and reckless Georgia has been with their reopening.

The equivalent to the population of Asheville has died so far despite massive mitigation efforts.

Any comparison to HIV is just incredibly dense. HIV is only contagious through direct contact with bodily fluids. COVID will likely prove to be 5-7x more deadly than the common flu and likely twice as contagious. It killed as many as a bad flu season starting at halftime with a score of zero. Give it a full season when it starts with an already established foothold in every state and then come talk.

I'm not saying keep everything locked down. But avoiding crowds? Absolutely. Wearing masks when in public? Yeah. Making an effort to maintain social distancing when and where possible? Yeah. We want the numbers to be as low as possible going into next fall. We hit over a million confirmed cases starting at halftime with zero. We'll be staring down the barrel of a full season starting with a helluva lot more than zero starting next fall. This is why second waves are worse.

This is why we're going to get mollywhopped by the second wave this fall. Over the course of the summer, the numbers will naturally tail off. More and more people will get tired of practicing social distance. More and more people will start crying wolf. The vast majority of people are absolutely clueless that the worst of this is still ahead of us.

Go ahead and go to church. Sing loud and proud from the bottom of your lungs. Put forth joyful noise (and lots of aerosol droplets). What could go wrong? https://www.yahoo.com/gma/nearly-200-possibly-exposed-coronavirus-religious-violated-stay-235400073--abc-news-topstories.html California public health officials have notified more than 180 people that they may have been exposed to the coronavirus at a religious service held in violation of the state's stay-at-home order. The Butte County public health department said Friday that an attendee at the service tested positive for the virus a day after the event.

So, basically what we're looking at if everything goes to plan is the possibility to be able to vaccinate high risk populations by year end with widespread vaccine access hopefully before 2021 cold/flu season kicks off. Either way, the second wave is coming and it'll be rough.

I honestly doubt it. I think there will probably be enough people who maintain social distancing standards, wear masks, etc. when combined with the naturally reduced contagiousness of the virus in warmer temps that it will postpone the second wave until the fall.