But that is the point, there is no short term on this. It is going to be with us for the next five years. Even Fauci saying that.
Yet with all of those warnings, obesity seems to be getting worse, not better. The American people don’t seem to care.
We struggled (and continue with some) to get them to cover their face with a piece of cloth. I don’t feel good about convincing them to stop putting unhealthy foods in their mouths.
On that note, it would be interesting to see how obesity correlates with anti-maskers.
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It will likely be with us for decades. But we will have treatments, vaccines, and herd immunity just like other flu/corona viruses.
Short term - physical distance and wear masks.
Lol! I am a marathon runner who has helped and encouraged many people through their process of losing weight and getting fit. I am 100% with you on people getting in better shape, it just isn’t a switch to flip on. For most people it will take a couple years of commitment to do it correctly. Some have health issues or because of age will be an even slower process. We will lose hundreds of millions more people before they get into shape.
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I run marathons too, much slower than I did 30 years ago. I am the old guy at the back of the pack now. I think it is very important to get the needle moving in the right direction. The obesity level is scary and it is a big contributor to why we are dying at the levels we are.
Yeah at some point more needs to be done to help people protect themselves…from themselves.
Same reason we have things like seatbelt laws and sin taxes on tobacco, alcohol, and gambling.
As bad as COVID is, I fully believe it will be largely under control by this time next year. A LOT of people will die in that span of time, but obesity will kill many more people over the span of decades unless we flatten THAT curve. Not saying we should attack obesity with the same level of urgency as COVID, but we should attack it with the appropriate level of intensity to shift the societal outcomes. We are not doing that now.
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I agree there are issues with obesity but I think dealing with it is separate from this pandemic. Not sure I agree with how you’re proposing dealing with it but also don’t think it’s crazy.
And, another big difference between obesity and COVID is obesity isn’t an infectious disease. I do agree that obesity is a huge problem for us though and it does impact all of us.
Less than a minute, good work Coogfans!
Yes the difference between obesity and COVID is that obesity is largely a disease that impacts the individual…it doesn’t have a direct societal impact like COVID does (that said there are big time indirect societal impacts).
I don’t think we can ever force people to exercise, but we need to do less to do less encouraging this lifestyle and culture of eating crap food. Having multiple kids, I can tell you the diets I try to raise them with go completely to hell once they start eating school lunches as it normalizes a lot of crap food. I’m all for eating a good burger, pizza, fried chicken nuggets/tenders/etc when the time calls for it. But it shouldn’t be the normal rotation of any person’s lunch. The problem is that we are training those habits to people as children.
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Here’s the thing, we can try to learn lessons as we go, but it’s going to be awhile before we really understand all the variables.
Sweden looked really bad (and still does to a large extent) but their daily deaths and new infections are completely plummeting while some of the other lockdown countries in Europe are starting to rise. Sweden also seems like they really mishandled nursing homes initially like NY did, which is a big part of why the death total is so high. Obviously other counties have a ways to go to catch Sweden, but by the end of this (depending on when an effective vaccine is ready), Sweden’s approach may not end up looking that much worse.
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We discussed on here before, the US approach was much closer to Sweden than to other countries in Europe. The thing about Sweden is they should never have gotten that bad based on location, population density, less travel, and other factors. They should be compared to Norway/Finland/Denmark and when they are, it looks extremely bad (10 times worse than Norway/Finland). They didn’t get anywhere close to their goal of herd immunity and the economy didn’t perform better than neighbors who went on lockdowns so it was a failure. I don’t see one sign that they are in a better position heading into this fall/winter than any other country in Europe. If there is a big second wave, logic would say they don’t get hit as hard as the bigger countries since they never should have with the first wave. The only way they would get hit as hard again would be by putting in the same plan.
Agree, we can’t really compare ourselves to Sweden.
Also, Sweden had more people sick when we had no idea how to treat this thing. People very likely died because of that. That’s another benefit of delaying the spread.
Cases are up in Norway and down in Sweden so I think that could be considered a sign. Even though COVID-19 antibodies don’t seem to last long there is some theorizing that having other cold antibodies could help and we also have almost no rehospitalizations yet. Maybe getting out and getting vitamin D helps as well. Places that have been in lockdown may be coming into the winter with worse immunity generally.
Sweden’s population centers are a little more dense than Norway too I believe and each economy is unique (Sweden’s economy has faired better than many countries in Europe), but I’m not going to pretend I’m an expert on either country and I agree it’s best to compare demographics as closely as you can. Sweden’s overall plan will likely still have failed, but the vast majority of their deaths were in nursing homes and in home health care. After the winter I don’t think it’s out of question we could find that had Sweden done a better job of protecting their most vulnerable their plan wouldn’t have been any worse than other countries.
But I also agree with RT that slowing down the spread at the outset made sense to buy time to better understand how to treat this and you can’t just discount that either.
don’t get to giddy…things are looking up!
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The concept is that if you lock down for a relatively short period of time, you get the virus under control, to a point where testing and contact tracing are effective. I’m not saying anything groundbreaking or innovative here, it was the plan for many places from the beginning.
Once the number of virus cases is reduced to a minimum, you open back up. Still maintain social distancing and masks. When testing shows hotspots you can lockdown a smaller area.
The concept was never to lockdown until there are no cases. Just lockdown until it’s manageable and traceable.
Right now you have both mandatory lockdowns (or at least mandated reductions for many businesses) as well as voluntary lockdowns. People don’t feel safe going out and spending money in the places they previously did.
We never could get to a point where contact tracing is feasible. We let coronavirus get out of hand through lack of testing and lack of a coordinated national plan.
I think the spin on testing leading to cases is backwards. We’re doing lots of testing now because we have to. The number of infections requires lots of testing. If we didn’t have cases we wouldn’t need the magnitude of testing.
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Good point Timmy. 
Another to put it: EU has 135% of the USA’s population but only 11% of the daily cases.
Pretty clear which group had the better plan.
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I feel like I’m getting Timmy-Banged here.
Which site are you using for Euro numbers? I like the ease of Wordometers, but it can be off some. They have both with slight increases, Sweden up to 274 new cases a day and Norway up to 37. I can tell you I have talked to people in both countries and they aren’t too worried. The people in Sweden basically quarantined themselves after cases/deaths spiked in the spring and are being smart about things. I have talked about it before, a big difference in Europe vs the US is the personal responsibility aspect. Too high of a percentage in the US haven’t and still aren’t taking the virus seriously.
I am waiting for Timmy to let Timmy know the population density numbers to back up Timmy’s first point even more.
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I wonder if I could get a thread shut down just by arguing with myself???
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