Where do you stand on opening things up during the Pandemic?

[Convoy2022_TrumpSupporter]

I live in Ontario Canada and we have already slowly started to open things up. Mostly essential stores or curbside pick up. It's a long weekend for us and everyone is planning to go to their cottage while our Medical officer is not encouraging them to go.

I work in a Community Hospital we are still on outbreak with Covid. While my heart goes out to those that are sick and those who are in financial trouble, why go out and risk their lives and others? One guy was telling me that they should open up everything, SPorts, Movies, Malls etc.. I told him he can catch the virus and get sick. He says he won't get sick, but I am like you have no control of that.

Also since NURSES and other healthcare workers work with Covid patients everyday, wouldn't it be reckless and Cavalier if people just went out and about like a regular day and then caught the virus then went to our Hospitals to get treated? I mean we are there to help no matter what, but they have no right to be reckless or infect us with the virus. I have a family to go home too.

[Silverdragon102, BSN]

Moved to the COVID discussion forum

[herring_RN, ASN, BSN]

I chose being safe. In my city we have to follow rules I think are sensible. If I disagreed I would write, call, or email elected officials, protest if fellow protesters were polite and obeying the law.

Some people violate the law and take chances like the barber in this article:

Quote

A New York barber who defied lockdown orders contracted COVID-19

• The New York barbershop was “operating illicitly.”
• Health officials urged anyone who received a haircut in Kingston in the last several weeks to contact a physician.
• New York’s coronavirus lockdown mandated nonessential businesses like barbershops to shut down.

Ulster County health officials announced Thursday an employee at the barbershop that has been “operating illicitly” tested positive for coronavirus and urged any who received a haircut in Kingston in the last several weeks to contact a physician or seek testing...

https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/longevity/498003-a-new-york-barber-who-defied-lockdown-orders-contracted

[A Hit With The Ladies, BSN, RN]

I think it's long past overdue. If you still enjoy staying home 24/7 and quarantining, do that. If you don't want to quarantine, don't. Free country. (I live in the US).

[adventure_rn, MSN, NP]

I think that we should begin to reopen, but we need to do so very thoughtfully and cautiously.

The purpose of flattening the curve was never to decrease the total number of cases. Rather, it was to slow down the rate of infection as to avoid overwhelming healthcare systems. With a 'flattened curve,' you still end up with the same number of cases, they just occur more slowly so that hospitals don't run out of staff, beds, and equipment.

The only way to truly lessen the total number of cases would be to continue social distancing until we have a vaccine or proven antibody testing/immunity, and IMO that won't be feasible.

I don't believe that we should put economic growth before the well-being of citizens, however, a crippled economy will end up seriously harming our most vulnerable citizens and push people on the brink over poverty over the edge.

That said, I wish my country (USA) had more reliable testing before we begin to reopen. Contact tracing is such an important tool to prevent local outbreaks, and it's almost impossible with inaccurate tests.

I also think that certain parameters need to be in place as we reopen (mandatory masking, empty seats between diners/airline passengers/etc.) Unfortunately, businesses are already proving that they won't uphold these rules of their own volition (I.e. airlines not enforcing mandatory masking, bars allowing mobs of people). IMO, the government needs to actually enforce these restrictions in order to safely reopen.

[Emergent, RN]

Slow reopening or no reopening are unfortunately are both going to cripple the economy.

Using the examples given of the airlines and the restaurant industry, I doubt either will be very sustainable with having spaces between passengers or fewer diners in the restaurant.

Their profit margins are too narrow for that. Airline tickets will have to double. How do you think that they make enough money to pay for all that jet fuel, the pilot, co-pilot and stewards, and all the support crew on the ground, not to mention the airplanes and their maintenance?

My late husband and I used to own a restaurant. You have a lot of overhead with staff needed, food to buy, and keeping the space going with utilities and rent etc. A restaurant needs volume at mealtimes to survive.

Already, after a couple of months, people are going permanently out of business. The strain on the unemployment system is totally unsustainable. If you think that we have a homeless problem now, we are going to have a worse one pretty soon.

We are headed towards an economic depression which will be a worldwide one. What sort of effect do you think that will have on the stability of the world? Do you think that it will ease tensions between nations?

[NICU Guy, BSN, RN]

States that began lifting the restrictions (Florida, Georgia, Texas) are not seeing a huge spike in cases. For the most part, people are being responsible. The last thing they want is a huge spike in cases and their state goes back into lock down. The relaxing of restrictions needs to be on a state by state basis and in some cases city by city. Chicago needs to be more cautious about the pace of their lifting of restrictions than rural Illinois, where there were few cases and people are more spread out.

A vast majority of the Covid deaths were elderly and unhealthy adults. The death rate for healthy people under 50 is extremely low, around 0.05%. The people that are at most risk need to protect themselves and the rest of the population needs to get back to normal (over the next month).

There have been around 90,000 deaths in the US due to Covid. That number is probably far less due to the fact that anyone that came to the hospital, for whatever reason, and had Covid-like symptoms was said to have died from Covid. A person that was in a car accident and died, but tested positive for Covid would be labeled as dying from Covid, not massive trauma from a car accident because the hospital gets more money from Covid patients. 60,000 people die each year in the US from the Flu (both young and old), but we don't shut down our country each flu season. You knock down a virus through vaccine and herd immunity. We strengthen our immune system by interacting with others. We weaken our immune system by isolating ourselves.

[Wuzzie]

45 minutes ago, NICU Guy said:

There have been around 90,000 deaths in the US due to Covid. That number is probably far less due to the fact that anyone that came to the hospital, for whatever reason, and had Covid-like symptoms was said to have died from Covid. A person that was in a car accident and died, but tested positive for Covid would be labeled as dying from Covid, not massive trauma from a car accident because the hospital gets more money from Covid patients.

Jeebus NICU Guy you are usually more reliable than this. What you wrote here is patently untrue and was based on a statement made by Dr. Birx that was wildly misconstrued and then spread with abandon on FB and other social media sites.

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/social-media-posts-make-baseless-claim-on-covid-19-death-toll/

[NICU Guy, BSN, RN]

Fine, take the 90,000 as completely accurate (John Hopkins Covid app). I think the current state of our country is extremely overblown. 90,000 deaths (Covid), close down our country and destroy our economy. 60,000 deaths (Flu), country as normal. I agreed in the beginning when the effect on our country was unknown, we should shutdown the country to "flatten the curve" to keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed. Excluding NYC/NJ, that never happened. At that point, we should have started opening the country (slowly) back up. Instead, the country has been shut down for 2 months and the goal post has been moved from keeping the hospitals from being overwhelmed to shut down until the virus is flattened. People want to act like Covid is a death sentence for everyone that gets it. Using the 5/9 CDC statistics (54,861 total deaths): 97.4% of Covid deaths were people 45+. 80% of Covid deaths were people age 65+. We shut down our school systems (Elementary-College) and there were a grand total of 65 deaths (age 5-24) which is 0.0012% of Covid deaths.

The shutdown was not to prevent people from dying, it was intended to prevent the overburden on our healthcare system.

[Wuzzie]

4 minutes ago, NICU Guy said:

Fine, take the 90,000 as completely accurate. I think the current state of our country is extremely overblown. 90,000 deaths (Covid), close down our country and destroy our economy.

Most epidemiologists believe that this number is actually much lower than the true death rate but unfortunately we will never really know.

5 minutes ago, NICU Guy said:

The shutdown was not to prevent people from dying, it was intended to prevent the overburden on our healthcare system.

I think any health care worker with half a brain is aware of this.

6 minutes ago, NICU Guy said:

Instead, the country has been shut down for 2 months and the goal post has been moved from keeping the hospitals from being overwhelmed to shut down until the virus is flattened.

With the exception of a very few places most areas of the country (outside of the hardest hit) are opening up or have already done so. The goal post has not moved. Not sure why people keep screaming about opening things up when it is already underway.

3 hours ago, NICU Guy said:

60,000 people die each year in the US from the Flu (both young and old), but we don't shut down our country each flu season.

That is the entire flu season. The 90k plus that have died from COVID have done so in 3 months. Three. Months!

I think there is a minute percentage of people who think we should still be shut down while the vast majority, myself included, believe we need to get things open, running and hopefully financially successful. However, it does no good to try to support your position with propaganda and unsupported statistics. It is especially galling to hear this kind of stuff from a nurse because the public expects us to know better.

[NICU Guy, BSN, RN]

1 hour ago, Wuzzie said:

It is especially galling to hear this kind of stuff from a nurse because the public expects us to know better.

We have a governor that did (may still do, I stopped watching) daily Covid briefing at 5 pm each day. Not once did he properly demonstrate what people need to do to keep safe. It would have been more productive to tell people that gloves are not magical. You can still pick up germs on your gloves. Countless times I have seen people wearing gloves out in public touching everything and then touching their face or dialing their phone and putting their phone to their face. I also saw a lady with a crocheted face mask at Wal-Mart. If he would have spent 5 minutes each broadcast to explain hand washing, touching their face, cleaning their phone, etc. would be far more beneficial to the spread of (insert germ/virus). This IS the person that the entire state relies on for their information.

1 hour ago, Wuzzie said:

However, it does no good to try to support your position with propaganda and unsupported statistics

My statistics are not unsupported. The 90,000 came from John Hopkins Covid app and the breakdown by age was directly from the CDC website. https://data.CDC.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku/data

I am just frustrated that the world leaders relied on an idiot researcher in the UK with a highly flawed computer model (that had incorrectly forecasted the last half dozen outbreaks) that the US would have 2 million deaths, which lead to this shutdown of our country. It wasn't until after the shutdown that other researchers had forecasted 150-200k.

[Wuzzie]

2 minutes ago, NICU Guy said:

We have a governor that did (may still do, I stopped watching) daily Covid briefing at 5 pm each day. Not once did he properly demonstrate what people need to do to keep safe. It would have been more productive to tell people that gloves are not magical. You can still pick up germs on your gloves. Countless times I have seen people wearing gloves out in public touching everything and then touching their face or dialing their phone and putting their phone to their face. I also saw a lady with a crocheted face mask at Wal-Mart. If he would have spent 5 minutes each broadcast to explain hand washing, touching their face, cleaning their phone, etc. would be far more beneficial to the spread of (insert germ/virus). This IS the person that the entire state relies on for their information.

Fortunately, the governor of my state has done a much better job but like I said the vast majority of the US is open or opening. Your beef is with your state's leadership and while legit does not apply to the rest of us.

3 minutes ago, NICU Guy said:

My statistics are not unsupported. The 90,000 came from John Hopkins Covid app and the breakdown by age was directly from the CDC website. https://data.CDC.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku/data

No, but your statement that the death count is actually much lower due to artificial inflation of numbers by spuriously assigning COVID as a COD for anything just to get more money is most definitely not supported and frankly is an outright lie used to rile up the more gullible among us.