Mar 11, 2020, 10:13 am
Last edit by: Ocn Vw 1K
In order to reduce noise in the Coronavirus / Covid-19 : general fact-based reporting thread, and to create a central place to invite any member to ask a basic question about the impact of COVID-19 on travel, your moderators have decided to open this separate "lounge" thread for related discussion that isn't strictly fact-based reporting.
Any member who can provide a constructive, helpful answer to a question; or post constructively in reply to a member's point-of-view, is welcome to post.
All FT rules apply, including avoiding personalized, snarky, political, other off-topic, commercial, and repeatedly disruptive content.
Discussion of general economic impacts of Covid-19 belongs in the OMNI forum, not here.
Discussion and critique of political/government actions to aid the economy or which is far more political than related to COVID-19 is for the OMNI/PR forum, not here.
This is a protocol for posting adopted by the forum Moderator team:Please follow this protocol, based on FlyerTalk Rules and long-standing FlyerTalk best practices. Doing so will help keep the thread open, and allow our moderator team to aid members, rather than having to resort to discipline.
•Constructive, respectful posts, views, opinions, questions, and replies, related to the topic are welcome. Avoid commenting on members personally, or posting off-topic or political messages.
•While respectful disagreement of a posted view is allowed, don’t call-out posters to prove their points. FlyerTalk has never required discussion standards at the level of a Ph.D. dissertation defense, or a trial court witness cross-examination.
•After a reasonable exchange of views on a point, please yield the floor so that others may bring up different topics, questions or points.
•Especially important in this time of pandemic, when normal life and travel have been upended: please take regular breaks from the thread.
Please stay healthy,
your FT Coronavirus and Travel Moderator Team.
Any member who can provide a constructive, helpful answer to a question; or post constructively in reply to a member's point-of-view, is welcome to post.
All FT rules apply, including avoiding personalized, snarky, political, other off-topic, commercial, and repeatedly disruptive content.
Discussion of general economic impacts of Covid-19 belongs in the OMNI forum, not here.
Discussion and critique of political/government actions to aid the economy or which is far more political than related to COVID-19 is for the OMNI/PR forum, not here.
This is a protocol for posting adopted by the forum Moderator team:Please follow this protocol, based on FlyerTalk Rules and long-standing FlyerTalk best practices. Doing so will help keep the thread open, and allow our moderator team to aid members, rather than having to resort to discipline.
•Constructive, respectful posts, views, opinions, questions, and replies, related to the topic are welcome. Avoid commenting on members personally, or posting off-topic or political messages.
•While respectful disagreement of a posted view is allowed, don’t call-out posters to prove their points. FlyerTalk has never required discussion standards at the level of a Ph.D. dissertation defense, or a trial court witness cross-examination.
•After a reasonable exchange of views on a point, please yield the floor so that others may bring up different topics, questions or points.
•Especially important in this time of pandemic, when normal life and travel have been upended: please take regular breaks from the thread.
Please stay healthy,
your FT Coronavirus and Travel Moderator Team.
COVID-19: Lounge thread for thoughts, concerns and questions
Mar 26, 2020, 4:17 am
#1681
Suspended
Join Date: Jan 2015
Location: Bregenz, Austria
Programs: AA, BAEC, Alaska, Flying Blue, United, IHG, Hilton
Posts: 2,950
I've recently been trying to add up-to-the-minute data on all-cause mortality to the metrics I'm keeping an eye on, to try to get some perspective on how many additional deaths are being caused by Covid-19.
The UK publishes figures on a weekly basis along with information about whether any statistically significant increase has been detected overall, or in subpopulations by region or age, against the prediction based on previous years. No increase was detected in the latest data. It was published nearly a week ago and it should be noted that there can be a time lag between death and registration of death.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statis...e-2019-to-2020
There is also EURO MOMO (European Mortality Monitoring) which is also published weekly as an aggregate across all of Europe and an aggregate for each country. This also shows no statistically significant increase for Europe or for any individual country, but that should be interpreted with caution. Any potential increase in the all-Europe figure is probably concentrated in Italy/Spain and would thus be diluted out of the aggregate for Europe by the rest of Europe. Any potential increase in Italy or Spain might be concentrated in a region and thus diluted by the rest of the country.
EURO MOMO
These will be interesting to monitor over the coming weeks. If anyone knows of other all-cause mortality monitoring data sources for other countries/regions please post links.
The UK publishes figures on a weekly basis along with information about whether any statistically significant increase has been detected overall, or in subpopulations by region or age, against the prediction based on previous years. No increase was detected in the latest data. It was published nearly a week ago and it should be noted that there can be a time lag between death and registration of death.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statis...e-2019-to-2020
There is also EURO MOMO (European Mortality Monitoring) which is also published weekly as an aggregate across all of Europe and an aggregate for each country. This also shows no statistically significant increase for Europe or for any individual country, but that should be interpreted with caution. Any potential increase in the all-Europe figure is probably concentrated in Italy/Spain and would thus be diluted out of the aggregate for Europe by the rest of Europe. Any potential increase in Italy or Spain might be concentrated in a region and thus diluted by the rest of the country.
EURO MOMO
These will be interesting to monitor over the coming weeks. If anyone knows of other all-cause mortality monitoring data sources for other countries/regions please post links.
Mar 26, 2020, 4:28 am
#1682
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 765
I think it's too early to say that. The data from the UK is 6 days old. Certainly the EURO MOMO data shows that Italy (as a country) is not dealing with unprecedented all-cause mortality, but that doesn't mean, for example, that Lombardy isn't. In any case, I'll be keeping a close eye on these sources.
Mar 26, 2020, 4:28 am
#1683
Suspended
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Watchlisted by the prejudiced, en route to purgatory
Programs: Just Say No to Fleecing and Blacklisting
Posts: 102,095
Predictive models have to get tweaked or even rewritten from scratch because of this kind of “A = B not applicable” approach not holding up as being as true (or true at all) as it was initially assumed/accepted to be.
Mar 26, 2020, 4:45 am
#1684
Join Date: May 2010
Location: AVP & PEK
Programs: UA 1K 1.8MM
Posts: 6,330
Wikipedia, at least, uses "Social distancing, or physical distancing" under the "Social distancing" entry.
It also has this: "lt has been requested that the title of this article be changed to Physical distancing"
I hope it gets changed.
I recall a story from a Chinese work colleague who took his kid outside in January in Beijing.
He was in the park alone until a man came with his kid. They approached each other but stopped short, maybe 20ft apart. They then had a conversation while their kids stayed close to their respective parent. How is that Social Distancing?
They socially interacted whilst maintaining a physical distance.
Mar 26, 2020, 5:43 am
#1685
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: eastern Europe & NC
Posts: 4,527
Someone who broke the lockdown has lost his life in a rather unusual way, by meeting a crocodile. The Rawandan man broke his country's Coronavirus lockdown to go fishing on a river, but a hungry crocodile found him there and ate him.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/fearl...ts-a-crocodile
https://www.dailywire.com/news/fearl...ts-a-crocodile
Mar 26, 2020, 5:55 am
#1686
Join Date: Sep 2015
Location: Between Seas
Posts: 4,711
Someone who broke the lockdown has lost his life in a rather unusual way, by meeting a crocodile. The Rawandan man broke his country's Coronavirus lockdown to go fishing on a river, but a hungry crocodile found him there and ate him.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/fearl...ts-a-crocodile
https://www.dailywire.com/news/fearl...ts-a-crocodile
Mar 26, 2020, 5:57 am
#1687
Suspended
Join Date: Oct 2014
Posts: 16,871
An interesting article.
How the Pandemic Will End
The U.S. may end up with the worst COVID-19 outbreak in the industrialized world. This is how it’s going to play out.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...us-end/608719/
How the Pandemic Will End
The U.S. may end up with the worst COVID-19 outbreak in the industrialized world. This is how it’s going to play out.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...us-end/608719/
Mar 26, 2020, 6:56 am
#1688
Join Date: Aug 2012
Posts: 6,752
Some facts (if wrong, please correct me):
1. As another poster put it, the path from pandemic to endemic - this cannot be stopped.
2. Eventually, 60% or 70% of USA population may become infected.
3. People in high risk categories have two options: 1) stay under lock & key & wait for a vaccine, 2) aceept risk, and venture out.
Let's eliminate the impossible, such as keeping everyone sheltered in place indefinitely. What's a reasonable time frame? 30 days? Maybe, 60? Not any more than that in my view. We have considerable data and will continue to have much more, and each person may assess their own risk respectively.
Some of you want me and my family to stay home until we have a vaccine? We should stay sheltered until there's a vaccine or when the risk is zero? These arguments are not to be taken seriously.
1. As another poster put it, the path from pandemic to endemic - this cannot be stopped.
2. Eventually, 60% or 70% of USA population may become infected.
3. People in high risk categories have two options: 1) stay under lock & key & wait for a vaccine, 2) aceept risk, and venture out.
Let's eliminate the impossible, such as keeping everyone sheltered in place indefinitely. What's a reasonable time frame? 30 days? Maybe, 60? Not any more than that in my view. We have considerable data and will continue to have much more, and each person may assess their own risk respectively.
Some of you want me and my family to stay home until we have a vaccine? We should stay sheltered until there's a vaccine or when the risk is zero? These arguments are not to be taken seriously.
Mar 26, 2020, 7:01 am
#1689
Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: I 35 south bound, finally stopped
Programs: LT Plt, 4mm, *A GLD, burned out medical provider, executing our estate plan
Posts: 1,665
Modified sterile technique
Interesting sort of. This MD suggests a modified “sterile” technique for grocery shopping. He breaks technique at least twice in the first 5 minutes but if you aren’t familiar with sterile technique it’s probably worth a look.
Mar 26, 2020, 7:01 am
#1690
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Madison, WI, USA
Posts: 14,162
Mar 26, 2020, 7:02 am
#1691
Join Date: Aug 2012
Posts: 6,752
I just care that they were right. If they were wrong, I care about that too. This isn't a game, and we're playing with the highest stakes here, and the consequences for being right or wrong should be consistent with those stakes.
Mar 26, 2020, 7:33 am
#1692
Suspended
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Watchlisted by the prejudiced, en route to purgatory
Programs: Just Say No to Fleecing and Blacklisting
Posts: 102,095
Interesting sort of. This MD suggests a modified “sterile” technique for grocery shopping. He breaks technique at least twice in the first 5 minutes but if you aren’t familiar with sterile technique it’s probably worth a look.
https://youtu.be/sjDuwc9KBps
https://youtu.be/sjDuwc9KBps
Reusable cloth bags that some people use for groceries and other shopping are more awful fomites than plastic bags .... at least for stuff stored in the open at a room temperature for people.
The tunnel-visioned and stove-piping “save the world” types are going to struggle with what how to align all the messages they jump on.
Mar 26, 2020, 7:52 am
#1693
Join Date: Feb 2013
Location: DCA
Posts: 7,769
I'm hoping to see some changes to the built environment in general going forward. For example, more restroom doors that open outward and fewer electric hand dryers (which can't be used to open a door handle and don't really have a life-cycle carbon savings versus paper towels anyhow).
Will be curious to see if the American love affair with buffets wanes (I'm guessing not).
Will be curious to see if the American love affair with buffets wanes (I'm guessing not).
Mar 26, 2020, 8:02 am
#1694
Join Date: Dec 2016
Posts: 13
Future tickets given the uncertainty of the corona outbreak
I was wondering how are others approaching the uncertainties on the corona situation. I would like to book tickets for future vacations - after summer, but I have been reluctant given the current situation where we do not know what is ahead. It doesnt sound feasible to have the current overall entry restrictions lasting for months, but it is such a situation that it sounds possible that there is an ongoing outbreak in any country at any time before a final solution (vaccine, immunization) is in place. Or that there are still arrival/quarantine impositions which would basically defeat the purpose of leisure trip.
Right now the government travel advice here is that "traveling abroad should be avoided unless strictly necessary, valid initially until mid April " and when I contacted my travel insurance they indeed said that if I booked a ticket now, even if the travel dates are at a much later period, they may not be able to cover me since I was aware of the epidemics when I booked. I know that some airlines are offering to waive change fees, but not all of them or not necessarily for travels to be booked much later on.
How are others dealing with the situation? Right now, Im thinking of waiting til mid april...
Right now the government travel advice here is that "traveling abroad should be avoided unless strictly necessary, valid initially until mid April " and when I contacted my travel insurance they indeed said that if I booked a ticket now, even if the travel dates are at a much later period, they may not be able to cover me since I was aware of the epidemics when I booked. I know that some airlines are offering to waive change fees, but not all of them or not necessarily for travels to be booked much later on.
How are others dealing with the situation? Right now, Im thinking of waiting til mid april...
Mar 26, 2020, 8:03 am
#1695
Join Date: Jan 2019
Location: SAN, BOS
Programs: AS MVPG100K, BAEC Gold, Hilton Diamond, Bonvoy Plat,
Posts: 2,279
What I find sad is that every perspective other than "this thing is terrible and will only get more terrible and we need the government to lock every single one of us in our homes immediately" gets either ignored or attacked. Virtually every decision that has been made so far has been made with extremely thin data. All new data should be welcomed whether it agrees with the groupthink or not.
Groupthink occurs when people withhold their true beliefs because they don’t want to disrupt the harmony of group, “not rocking the boat”. People disagreeing with you, even if you’re in the minority opinion (and I’m not making judgements about wrong or right in this sense), is not groupthink.
Groupthink can be right or it can be wrong, although most people think about it in terms of when things go wrong. Classic example is JFK’s decision to green light the bay of pigs.
