I'm not sure I agree with your headline. You treat CDC as one voice and then the negative side is made up of many voices.

I believe there are people on both sides that would lie about numbers to support their position. Whether consciously or unconsciously. I also believe the vast majority of people are trying to present the information accurately based upon the information they have and the tools they have available to present said information. It is very tough when you could look to a single state and find that state numbers don't match numbers on a local/county site. Numbers on a one news organization site doesn't match numbers on another channel's site. Educational Institution sites numbers don't match. It seems we don't have a single source of truth which makes validating who is right tough. And many like myself don't have time to scour the thousands of sights out there.

Everyone is lying to make Trump look bad. The whole world is out to get Trump.

Don't you know anything?

That wall that was supposedly build by Trump supporters? FAKE NEWS!!! It's a huge hunk of garbage made by NEVER TRUMPERS to make TRUMP LOOK BAD!!!

CDC IS LYING TO YOU!

FAUCI IS WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING BECAUSE HE HATES TRUMP!

Nobody wants America to be Great Again.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Hmmm I dont know who is lieing. But I do know hospital data on covid is now bypassing the CDC and going right to the White House:

https://www.cnn.com/...-data-cdc/index.html

what the actual fuck?!?!?!

It doesn't matter. As the pain keeps coming into the fall, some will turn against their Orange Lord and some will still be wearing their cute little "Make America Great Again" hats 4 years running, as if they are still waiting for it to happen.

One thing this pandemic is teaching is us is that the US' main failing is gathering accurate data. Our data is all over the place and unreliable. Just look at the recent issue in Florida with the positivity rate being reported as 100% by a lot of labs. We also have issues of double counting positive people because they get tested multiple times. In WA we just removed about 40 people from the death toll. In multiple states deaths are being reported that were months old but its being reported as deaths that day. Its hard to garner trust with these issues. I'm starting to rely more on data scientists instead of medical professionals when interpreting this data.

And we also haven'r really left the mindset at the beginning of all of this about the unchecked death toll of this virus from places like the Imperial College that never even came close to being reality. We've never really reset our thinking.

Side note to what you are saying:

One of the things I've learned at my job (I work as a data scientists in an enormous engineering company) is that if I am presenting material to a whole room full of very smart people, some of whom are engineers, but most of whom are not, it is "more believable" to present simple, easy to understand numbers that are consistent and add up properly, than to present the actual data.

There is this attraction that people have to want to "outsmart the experts." I've seen this over and over again, where senior managers, directors, execs, etc. will scan a slide hoping to find a 2 + 2 = 5 error. More often, it was a 2.32 + 2.41 = 5 "error."

On the flip side, the smartest of the smart technical people were the complete opposite. If your numbers are too round, then they think you are lying.

So why should I expect carpet cleaners, truck drivers, and painters to be any different? They look at the numbers the CDC puts out, and then they try to outsmart those egg headed scientists who think they know everything.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

I read the article as sowing suspicion of the CDC because it could be controlled by the Trump administration. So both CNN and your rural friend are spreading doubts about the CDC, but for entirely opposed reasons. Plus the narrative of the lying can go in other directions: Is the lying to overstate our testing capacity or to overstate our number of new cases? Those reasons are tribally opposed as well.

Edit: I don't think the "who is lying" question is always such a fruitful one -- for this case that seems true.

I agree with you here. I worked running accounting numbers for a software company years and years ago. I was not an accountant, but could do basic math really well. :) What that really meant is 1. I could do the accounting and 2. The numbers I gave were believable because I didn't know how to fake it. That made me valuable because to many project adminstrators were fudging their numbers to show the margin the CEO wanted.

I see this the same way. People are trying really hard to show that what they say or believe is correct. It is the problem with statistic. You can make numbers say anything you want, and only a small number of people will be able to prove you are lying or not completely honest.

I hope this is not directed at me. I did not bring up Trump or do anything to make this political. Personally I trust the CDC to do what is right and they would definitely be the group I would listen to on Corona. As compared to politicians, media or anyone in the LR.

Tribally opposite is a good way to describe it.

I know people on the right that believe we've not hit an iceberg.
And I know people on the left who think we've hot all of the icebergs in the ocean.


But what "tribe" do you think the epidemiologists belong to? What incentive is there to lie about the numbers to make everything appear worse than it actually is?

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

Barry, I don't know what to say.

Cooking the books on pandemic numbers is one thing. Either side could do that. The left could do it to make the right look bad. But a faction within the right is doing it explicitly to peddle a conspiracy theory. It's not politics to them........it's a fabricated reality they're selling.......one that even though it is fabricated..........they freaking believe it. That's scary.

Notice I didn't say "the right". I said a "faction". I say that to mean that not all righties are conspiracy theory nuts. But for some reason, it's become a popular staple in American conservatism.

I'm a registered dem. I'd vote for a fact and science based conservative any day of the week. But Republicans have largely allowed the "white male Christian genocide" narrative grow to Biblical proportions fueled by talking heads peddling conspiracy theories. That makes it hard for me to swallow that pill and pull that lever.

It's become the party of conspiracy theories and invented persecutions thanks to folks who didn't say anything, or folks like McCain who was just too late.

You know where that strategy comes from? It's roots are in the evolution of the white nationalist's culling of their more radical roots to become a more populist movement. Starting with Don and Derek Black and accomplished through Rush, the Tea Partiers, Hannity et al. Derek might be out now, but the folks he started on the new mission are off to a freaking great start.

To those folks everything is one massive conspiracy theory against white America.

The current language of a lot of these folks is right out of the Stormfront playbook. The guy who took Stormfront over cleaned house of all the traditional violent neo nazis out to murder folks. Then he starts pushing a new idea of "popularizing" the narrative of white male Christian genocide in America through using a lot more PC or common terms.

The old popular racist cusswords became things like "illegals". The popular "BLM is racist" trope, yeah.....that started out on Stormfront. The whole "rapists and murderers coming over the border". Yup, that too. The one about black on black murders that got posted almost weekly here for a while? Yup, that one too.

From the freaking guy's own mouth, in the book. Leader of Stormfront. Saying that's where that stuff came from.

It explains a lot of the words, phrases, conspiracies and narratives we hear out of the WH and from the connections to Trump and Fox media these days.

I do not believe it is some mass conspiracy that those racist guys leading that group infiltrated government in some kind of Qanon like manner to take over. I just think that they did a good enough job sanitizing the talking points that weak minds latched on to something that sounded good.

I do not think there is any deep state white power effort in US government. I think it's just stupid and selfish politicians who in weakness found a message that resonated with them and they're now parroting it. Whether they realize the origins or not.

Since some don't even know the origins, or how some of that shit started........that's why people get so freaking offended if you say something like "calling people illegals is racist". They don't get it. They don't know the origin. So yeah, you're offended if you've never heard of it.

That's why when people push against the "BLM is racist" or "Chicago black on black murders" bit they get so offended. They don't understand it's origin or intent.

You can call it my one conspiracy.......but I'd be DAMN curious to cross reference a username log of forum members that have been banned in the past and a list of Stormfront usernames. Some of the phrases and talking points at times have been, and still are suspiciously close.

I'm not done with the book yet, but man..........it makes a lot of what we see right now make a lot more sense.

I'll side with the one who allows the data to be publicly available.

It is not directed at anyone. It is basically what Trump has been moaning the past few weeks.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

You make some good points, but I think this has always been a facet of American "conservatism," or as you said "faction of," but I think its a pretty big faction.

I urge anyone to go back and look at the Great American Dust Bowl. Nothing has changed. They destroyed the land and killed a lot of people because they didn't want to be told what to do.

Someone will pipe in a say, "but there was a drought." I get it. There WAS a drought. But there were also solutions to mitigate the effects of the drought that were fought with hard resistance.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

Yesterday in Florida, there was a lot of discussion about Orlando Health reporting a staggering 98% positivity rate. At the same time, conservative sites started spreading the idea that the dems were cooking the books to make it look really bad. Shortly thereafter, Orlando Health said that the FDOH's report was incorrect and that the positivity rate was 9.4%, hinting that someone else had either made a clerical error, or cooked the numbers to make it seem like the health system was lying.
At the same time, the exact same thing happened with Lee Health system in South Florida, with the state report indicating 100% positivity, and LH correcting that it was 14%.
More here https://www.clickorlando.com/...nt-of-health-report/
I will let you decide who is interested in cooking the numbers to look good. My views are the same re. the CDC.

As someone who also works with data a great deal, what I find confounding on the argument about cooking the books is that there is a paper trail on all this. And how exactly would either party get that many people on board to cook the books. This isn't enron. We are talking about doctors, hospitals, labs, county health, state health, cdc. That's not to say that numbers aren't wrong---but that is a totally different issue.

Maybe if there is a one party system in the constitutional offices, supermajority in the legislature, appointed state health director that is partisan and several local people in on it...then maybe you could cook the books. Or you are paying off the labs. Neither of these seem probable to me.

I don't know if anyone else knows the data trail but I suspect it looks like this

local testing site/hospital/PCP --> lab --> original site/county health dept -->state health dept --> CDC --> HHS

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

A rule of thumb I live by is don't look for a conspiracy will simple incompetence will suffice. Many (most?) of the reporting errors here in FL for positivity rate have been off by precisely a whole order of magnitude: e.g. 99% positivity instead of 9.9%, 100% instead of 10%.

What boggles my mind is that antibody tests are still being counted as new cases. This is a known problem and nobody has taken the initiative to separate those tests out into a different data series.

Probably safe to say they don't distribute much into "Trumpista" territory.



I agree that there doesn't look like much net incentive to lie. High likelihood you'll get caught. Hard to coordinate. Devastating to the reputation if found out. And will it even make a difference?

There's an argument to be made that the high point of American competence was 1994 (during the hosting of the World Cup to be precise -- perhaps another thread). My perception is that the decline since has been swift.

That's what the article is about. But not new "cases," but adding them to the test pool.

If they are bumping the cases, I'd like to know. Do you have a link?

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

I think all around it’s bullshit. It’s bullshit in the sense that what the CDC wants to happen isn’t possible as the implementation sucks. Further, the numbers get tweaked and yeah, I agree from a Trumps point of view that the numbers look worse than reality for many reasons that I won’t get into.

I called in May when I had headaches for a week. It was a weird headache as it felt like a hangover. Some people were claiming a COVID takes on similarities to altitude sickness which has a similar type of headache. Ok, get tested like the CDC asks me to do. I call the doctor and also look online. Lots of “run around” and difficulty. Doctor won’t let me come in. They call me back on the phone and I talk to a nurse. I tell them about the headaches and they tell me I can’t get tested. Why not? They tell me to quarantine for 14 days. Oh, yeah- ok. You can’t confirm it’s COVID, but I’m suppose to stay at home for 14 days?

Fast forward to last week. I was sick. Had many symptoms on the list for COVID. I was home for 3 days. I go online and answer questions and I qualify for a test. I find a testing site a CVS pharmacy in the drive-thru. I take the test. I’m at day 11 and I don’t have results yet. What a fricking joke. I’ve isolated myself for 11 days and I don’t have results. It’s bullshit.

I am suppose to worry about everyone else, that’s what “they” want us to do. So, I stay at home and yet it’s a bunch of games on getting an answer.

In the meantime, I don’t know a single person that has had COVID. Yet, this was going to kill us all back in March/April. Numbers show more people die in car accidents and we all drive around. If I did have a COVID, it was a 3 day crappy cold. It wasn’t worth shutting down the world. At least from my point of view. Yeah, yeah, save a Grandma... whatever, I’ve heard it all.

The short of your post: you think it's a hoax.

Gotcha.

About 38,000 people die from auto accidents a year. Not sure if that include suicide.

But who cares about facts, amirite?

That is not at all what I said. Nice job CNN

I said the implementation of any sort of plan is bullshit.

For the record, I can understand the frustration in getting results back. The states are receiving less funding for testing from the federal government and most states are strained for testing. Hospitals sub to labs and most labs are slammed with those. And getting covid results is just one thing they have added to everything else. The entire infrastructure is strained.

But don’t make the underestimate the severity. We have discussed that in many threads. Mild for covid isn’t mild for the cold or even a flu. If you did have it and it was minimal then good for you. Be happy about that. You won’t have permanent lung or heart damage. And if you don’t know anyone who had it then consider yourself doubly lucky.

Until your last paragraph, I largely agree with you. And you should be upset with how the government, including the CDC, messed up the testing program. I won’t bore everyone with all the details again, but there were a litany of errors. And we completely squandered the lockdown period to get on top of the virus, set up contact tracing, not reopen too early (especially indoor dining and bars), etc.

Your last paragraph just makes you look unintelligent and insensitive. And if you want the economy back, take a look at Germany. A population of 83 million averaging about 500 cases a day (not Taiwan-level good but still pretty damn good), and their services index has seen a sharp V-shaped recovery. Bottom line: if we want the economy back quickly, we need the pandemic under control in this country. It would be a good start if everyone would just quit their stupid bickering and wear a mask indoors in public.

X 2

I am trying, really, to understand comments like these. Not a troll.

The 2018 flu season took nearly 80K lives. We are still under double that with covid. Yes, more people are dying than the flu: many old and many with comorbidities.

For me, a pandemic would be somewhere around an order of magnitude worse than a flu season. We are not there. So where is the line in the sand for people?

Also, I must have missed how we know that there is permanent damage occurring when we are months into a novel virus. Is it because scans reveal damage that is similar/same to damage seen elsewhere that is known to not heal?

PS: i wear a mask.

Again, I am not a troll. This site is filled with intelligent people, but I think the world has gone crazy...

How many people do you think would be dead by now if we had continued life as normal?

Did you see the mortality rate in N Italy when the hospitals were overwhelmed?

So, give us your best informed guess of US deaths under a scenario of no change in societal behavior. What order of magnitude over flu season deaths will convince you?

Ok. Fair. Let me try to explain as well as I can. If things continue as they’re going, we will probably hit around 250,000 deaths. It’s mid July. We were hoping for some seasonality and there is none. We are still losing 1,000 a day.

Also, the number of deaths for the flu are largely overestimated for a variety of reasons (if RChung is reading this, I hope he chimes in) whereas we know that deaths due to COVID19 are largely underestimated. Typically to have an accurate count we will need to compare with baseline over the same period, averaged over previous years. There are a couple of studies already and we may be missing anywhere between 30 and 50pct of those dying from COVID19.

Assuming about 20pct of the population gets the disease and 20pct of these are mild, we can then expect roughly 3-4M people after the first season of pandemic to have lifelong complications with cardiomyopathies and limited lung functions among other things (also clotting, organ failure etc).

The strain on the healthcare system would be enormous.

No clue about what would happen if nothing was done. Hypotheticals are endless.

Many people have taken some precautions even though the numbers are showing it is not that bad if you are young and healthy. Yes, some of that population does die, etc.

I expect people to act reasonably but we live in a country with, what, 2/3 of people are overweight so people are not acting reasonably with respect to their health already. That is a bit of a tangent but why are we not hearing about ways to personally mitigate a compromised immune system: healthy weight, exercise, vitamin d, etc?

Seriously, I am not in tune with the media but why is this not happening?

I did not see what the mortality rate was when the hospitals were overwhelmed? Care to inform me?

I stated above: for me a pandemic would be coined when we are around one order of magnitude (about ten times) over a flu season.

I personally would like a more nuanced approach. Kids 0-14 are experiencing less deaths by about a factor of 10 from covid compared to flu. I need to look at the numbers again, but I wouldnt be surprised if under 45 years old, covid is less deadly than the flu or at least similar. Quarrantine the most vulnerable. Send the stimulus check disproportionately to them (maybe havent thought about this) and let the rest of us get on with it.

Thank you. This gives me something to look into. It is crazy if flu deaths are over reported as you say. I mean we have been having flus for a long time. And if covid is underreported, yup bad news.

I am extremely skeptical of medical studies. I admit. I am trained in a "hard science" and I have read many medical journal articles through the years and the methodology is well different.

edit: my understanding is that we are trying to "break the curve" in terms of not getting the hospitals overwhelmed. I am down with that.

Our personal healthcare is in tatters, our healthcare system is not able to handle this as well if what people are saying is true. (I live in one of the places that is supposed to be a spike, but the locals are saying they still have room for more patients??) What happens when we do have a virus that is an order of magnitude worse?

I think (assuming you do not think they lied about the past) the CDC has records for prior year flu statistics, and in a general sense the death rate from seasonal flu is roughly between 25,000 and 60,000 per year. So assuming your system of order of magnitude then 600,000 would that convince you? seems like a high bar? but alrady we have you at 138,000 and as Francois says there is reason to believe that death may be under reported, and finally there is the long term health impairment that is possibly caused by CODID-19... how will that be factored in.

Pandemic is a big word for me. Yup, factor of ten over flu does it.

Love to see links to under-reported cases.

Love to see links to long term health damage.

I’m trained in mathematics and informatics. And many others like me moved to biomedical research. There is an explicit NIH funding mechanism to help folks from quantitative sciences transition to biomedical sciences. There is a lot of top notch science. And some not so good. And the same is true with hard science.

I suppose the issue is dealing with the uncertainty of the results of a study since it often times comes with some P-value and CI. That’s why studies are replicated.

If we didn’t change our behavior AT ALL (still normal use of public transport, air travel, indoor sports arenas, concert halls, offices, restaurants, bars, etc.), then assuming 50% of the population contracted the virus, and a conservative 1% death rate (Northern Italy’s was double digits), then you’re looking at about 1.6 million deaths in the US. Those are conservative numbers. If 60% contracted the virus and the death rate was 3% (because hospitals are overwhelmed), then that would equate to about 6 million deaths in the US, or about 150 times an average 40k flu season.

 
"Love to see links to long term health damage." not hard to search for secondary issues of COVID but for link to long term damage... wait maybe 2 years (important to note in the sentence the words Long Term) then look for links to this. We need what is called an abundance of caution concept here, it is too late 2 years from now when people start showing up with heart conditions, strokes, etc etc.... that might have been avoided if the disease was not allowed to spread at will.

I share your frustration on the way we have dealt with the pandemic.

It is bullshit that we in the US don't have readily available testing and much, much quicker turnaround time on those tests.

It is bullshit that we can't see to get the numbers straight.

On the severity, of the case you think you might have had, it is clear that people have great variations in their symptoms to contracting COVID. It is bullshit that nearly 140,000 people in the country have died from it.

It is bullshit that we in this country have had such an awful ability to to some basic things like wear a mask, social distance and respond to this pandemic in a nonpolitical way.

I blame all of this bullshit on our politicians- the President, some of the Governors and Mayors, but mostly the President- who from the start have acted like this a hoax and not listened to the science and not acted in a manner to fight the virus. That bullshit has resulted in where were are today, with the pandemic still out of control, economic recovery inhibited, and fear and uncertainty about restarting education/sports/life in the fall.

All of this bullshit is owned by Trump. Damn near anyone else would have managed it with more leadership and effort and set us up as a nation to avoid this bullshit.

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Suffer Well.

Apparently a little too big of a word for you. A pandemic disease doesn't haven have to be deadly. It just refers to the breadth of geographic area a disease affects - it just means the disease has spread across multiple continents, etc.

So if you're looking for some term to describe the difference in general severity between the flu and the 'vid, you need to look for another term.

Thanks for the informative response. I was under the assumption that the virus is going to kill who it will kill other than the cases that are borderline and having a hospital infrastructure not overwhelmed will help those people. So the lock down was to ensure a slow spread, not a no spread.

So your idea is that if we slow it enough, then it will simple stop spreading to the vulnerable and hence we have saved more lives overall?

What is the timeframe for the virus, once caught to remain contagious?

So many confounding variables...

So the influenza each year is a pandemic?

That's correct. The definition of epidemic/pandemic does not involve severity or anything of the sort. It refers to spread. Pan is Greek for all. Demos is people.
Ah. I knew learning Latin and Greek would be useful one day.

Guess my google fu is not good this morning. I absolutely agree that if there are long term affects for a sizeable portion of those getting covid, which is a large number of people, that is concerning. I can't find any hard numbers on lung scarring cases etc.

So if you think that this is very prevelant, where is the line in the sand for you? Should we remain shut down until there is less than xxx% of the population with covid or ??

I ask because I seem to see, now I am pretty blind at times, people's justification shifting. And it is good and okay to do that in light of good new information.

Just like why i am posting here and not on FB, infact signed out of that, cause you all are pretty smart and I want to understand how you are thinking about this.

Maybe I am just a crusty heart and consider that most (yes some healthy people are dying) of the adults in the country were already quite unhealthy and now the piper is here to be paid.

Thanks. I guess it seems like a charged word. Do you see the media using pandemic when the flu season rolls around? Either way it is tangential to the hard numbers.

No way we would hit 50%. The worst case scenario for a pandemic, if you look at the history of pandemics would be just under 25%.
Also, 1% is not necessarily conservative. Estimates are between .6 and 1%. Northern Italy has a much older population, and there may be some variation in strains (although that's still being debated). So a conservative estimate would be that we could see around 20% infection rate (66M) and about around 660,000 deaths give or take, without anything being done. Your numbers aren't conservative.

I'd argue that what the media use is irrelevant. What matters is what scientists and healthcare providers use. The seasonal flu tends to not be a pandemic because it's more a circulating virus that affects regions at separate times during the year. Occasionally, we do get a new strain that affects the entire world at once. That was for instance the case with a new H1N1 strain in 2009, and H2N2 in 1957-58 (which was really bad) and of course the Spanish flu in 1918. Those are all referred to as pandemic since they impact the entire world over the same period of time.

1. They make flu vaccine annually, with some measurable level of success or failure and some measurable level of compliance in getting the vaccine. Covid does not yet.

2. We pretty much know the short term and long term implications of getting the flu. We're daily learning more about Covid. Do you as a person posting on an endurance athletics forum WANT degraded lung performance the rest of your life?

3. What about car accidents? Didn't Neil deGrasse Tyson mention this about mass shootings? Another whataboutism to deflect from the topic at hand, just like Chicago murders. Let's talk both, separately. I won't entertain trolls that like to combine them to suit their own interests. Frankly deGrasse Tyson got it wrong when he implied it was only about the death count. The destruction of our freedom to go to the places in which mass gun violence incidents have occurred without fear or without crazy precautions (like arming everyone) is also a massive problem that he conveniently ignores. Same for Covid. The whataboutisms with the flu and car accidents totally ignores any other implications on daily lives other than death itself.

4. The human body has been exposed to some array of influenza since you've been alive. You probably haven't been exposed to a Covid style virus in your lifetime. So, there may be some kind of built up defense or awareness in biology there that I don't understand that is a positive there.

5. People tend to ignore what they've lived with forever. Racism, poverty, violence, hatred, inequality, the flu, car deaths, etc.....Do we WANT Covid to be like those also? I hear some people in here sounding like they might want that. Just chalk it up as a new "death and daily inconvenience" tally mark.

Thank you again for the reasonable reply.

I have some things to do, but I plan to google some info on long term damage issues etc.

I was avoiding even looking into all this but then the parents in my state started freaking out about their kids getting it. And then people talking about the number of cases skyrocketing. Well there is a ton more testing. Duh. A friend on FB posted "the hospitals are not able to take any more patients..." He linked an article. I read the article and the hospital director stated they have 15% more capacity left. That does not help inform people as to what is really goin on here. I looked and the cdc stated 9 people under 20 years old have died from this in my state. That is much less than the flu and it is crazy that 700 kill themselves each year.

I want information, not emotion.

Well, it's my job (I direct a biomedical data science lab at a school I can't name, but we invented gatorade ;-) ) and right now we have a lot of projects on COVID-19 so I'm looking at the data constantly (and it's worrisome, and tiring).

I'll only address #2 and #3 (and I think you should relax...this is just a conversation)

#2: yes, more people under the age of 20 and likely a much higher age, but I havent gone into those numbers as I was focusing on kids, die from the flu so far. Why no masks then? I bet if you remove comorbities it is even more stark.


#3 I am not using whataboutisms. It seems you think that a lockdown only has positives but that is simply not true. You are likely a well off upper middle class or better. Be thankful for what you have. Many do not have such luxuries.
Covis is an issue. I think the response is wrong. It should be more nuanced. Older and more at risk: stay at home, etc. I have no real problem with wearing a mask, in fact, I think it is reasonable during every flu season. What about the small business owner who is not making any money? Whelp, first expense to go is health care insurance. Now he gets some disease...Do you see how these issues are complicated?

We need a region dependent approach (and the size of the region may vary too). The response in NYC shouldn't be the same response as a small town in Montana for instance.
But what we absolutely need is true leadership with folks who listen to scientists instead of undermining them, and who trust their work to take it to policy makers and decision-makers, in order to ensure that what we know translates well into actionable decisions that are appropriate for each location.

I completely agree. Thanks again.

edit*: forgot to add the deaths for those 9 people under 20 years old is in a state with a population of 7 million.