Disney World needs to reopen and STAY OPEN

[Boardwalkbrats]

I'm sorry if I come across as someone who is uninformed or uneducated. I was a critical care nurse for over 10 years. When my DH and I lived in Sunnyvale California in the late 90s, I worked at Kaiser Permanente in the I.C.U and occasionally on their step-down unit. As a nurse we had to do a lot of continuing education to maintain our license, and I actually attended a lecture series on infectious disease. One was given by an epidemiologist. Now, in no way am I saying that I attended Stanford...didn't have the grades for that, but I remember that lecture, and remember being fascinated by it. So, I am pretty clear on what a pandemic is. Do I have a rolodex of pandemics scrolling through my head? No. But, like you I am familiar with wikipedia and google.

And quite honestly, I'm not politicizing this pandemic at all. I, like many Americans, were hoping for....expecting.....a much better response to this pandemic. One that is led by public health officials, medical professionals and scientists. Politicians with "gut feelings" and pandemics....turn out to be a lethal combination. With each passing day, I am honestly shocked at how badly we're doing.

I too work in the medical field and have a few hours in virology as well as epidemiology as those courses are in the first few years of medical school. I too attend many hours of continuing education to keep my license to practice current. I don’t use Wikipedia for my info, I am old enough to have medical text books in my library. As you can see there is not consensus among medical professionals and scientists on how this should or should not be handled, or even how it is going. The next few weeks to months are going to tell the story of how this reopening is going to go down in history. If this virus is attenuating and the death tolls and ICU stays don’t spike along with the increase in infections. Then that’s when I say it was handled well. I do believe that is what is going to happen. But I have been wrong and am open to the prospect that I maybe wrong again. This is the path my education and history points my opinion to favor. We are dealing with a biological in a biological system, so there is variation mutation, drift and shift of virulence that is difficult to account for.

God bless and be well.

 

[Orion Nebula]

I have been so confused on how so many feel comfortable running out to the parks right now. Even if your scoffing at the numbers or the inherit risks, looking at this as political or not. It's still seems a bit sketchy. And to be blunt, straight putting your families health at risk in order to simply experience a watered down version of the happiest place on earth. I am really curious as to why.

 

[dvcgirl67]

I too work in the medical field and have a few hours in virology as well as epidemiology as those courses are in the first few years of medical school. I too attend many hours of continuing education to keep my license to practice current. I don’t use Wikipedia for my info, I am old enough to have medical text books in my library. As you can see there is not consensus among medical professionals and scientists on how this should or should not be handled, or even how it is going. The next few weeks to months are going to tell the story of how this reopening is going to go down in history. If this virus is attenuating and the death tolls and ICU stays don’t spike along with the increase in infections. Then that’s when I say it was handled well. I do believe that is what is going to happen. But I have been wrong and am open to the prospect that I maybe wrong again. This is the path my education and history points my opinion to favor. We are dealing with a biological in a biological system, so there is variation mutation, drift and shift of virulence that is difficult to account for.

God bless and be well.

There's no way to construe this as a "win". I understand that the idea initially was to stay home to prevent our hospital systems from being overrun. We did that in the Northeast, barely. Because the south opened too soon, it looks like we're going to see that wave crest again in certain southern cities and counties. The hospitals are beginning to fill just from the sheer number of cases. We're 4% of the world's population and currently represent 25% of the deaths. Those are the facts. There's no way to B.S. Jedi-mind trick or spin this into even a "mostly okay" response as the administration repeatedly tries to do. Here in NJ, our Governor let us now that our R0 is now above 1.0. The main culprit appears to be New Jersyans traveling to hot spots around the country and bringing the virus back with them. I have a young knucklehead cousin who did just this a couple of weeks ago. It's just a huge mess. I sure wish it wasn't, but unfortunately it is.

 

[Orion Nebula]

I too work in the medical field and have a few hours in virology as well as epidemiology as those courses are in the first few years of medical school. I too attend many hours of continuing education to keep my license to practice current. I don’t use Wikipedia for my info, I am old enough to have medical text books in my library. As you can see there is not consensus among medical professionals and scientists on how this should or should not be handled, or even how it is going. The next few weeks to months are going to tell the story of how this reopening is going to go down in history. If this virus is attenuating and the death tolls and ICU stays don’t spike along with the increase in infections. Then that’s when I say it was handled well. I do believe that is what is going to happen. But I have been wrong and am open to the prospect that I maybe wrong again. This is the path my education and history points my opinion to favor. We are dealing with a biological in a biological system, so there is variation mutation, drift and shift of virulence that is difficult to account for.

God bless and be well.

I have a good friend who is a paramedic and his wife is an ER nurse. They both were warned to be prepared due to the second incoming wave. I was told a few weeks ago that I needed to keep my family safe and pretend that the stay at home orders were not lifted as an even bigger storm was coming. We didn't change, still wear masks, limit our exposure to public places, no gatherings etc. Our lives are still very disrupted, but even if this is some kind of giant conspiracy I am willing to make the sacrifices for my loved ones as well as others in society. It's so sad that people have to fight against that and shake their heads at people like me like we are "brainwashed".

 

[Boardwalkbrats]

I have a good friend who is a paramedic and his wife is an ER nurse. They both were warned to be prepared due to the second incoming wave. I was told a few weeks ago that I needed to keep my family safe and pretend that the stay at home orders were not lifted as an even bigger storm was coming. We didn't change, still wear masks, limit our exposure to public places, no gatherings etc. Our lives are still very disrupted, but even if this is some kind of giant conspiracy I am willing to make the sacrifices for my loved ones as well as others in society. It's so sad that people have to fight against that and shake their heads at people like me like we are "brainwashed".

I hope you didn’t not see my posts in that light. As I have stated many times live your life with the risk levels you are comfortable with. I never accused anyone on here with being “brainwashed” just putting out some statistical facts for people to look at. Depending on where you live the response should be different for you based on population density and lifestyle.

Again I stress I am not telling anyone what is best for them or their family. I am trying (albeit not very eloquently) to give some facts and ease the fear factor. I catch the other side of this coin by people trying to virtue shame me because I’m not living in fear of this virus. That is based on multiple factors which I won’t bore you with here.

I hope you and your family stay healthy and happy.

 

[DopeyDame]

You apparently have no perspective of history, and seem to think this is the first pandemic. Do you have this same feel for flu pandemics? You behave as if there is some magic government can do to stop the spread of disease. If so they should have done it for H1N1. Mostly okay means there are a few things I would like to have been done differently. Like the governors of New York, New Jersey and Minnesota not sending Covid infected people to nursing homes. 130,000 people passing away is sad, but everyone of us will get to experience it regardless of wether we live and behave as you feel we should. Any human life loss is sad. What is pathetic is your selective outrage and politicizing these losses.

The H1N1 pandemic was literally an order of magnitude less than the current pandemic. ~12,000 people died in the US between April 2009 and April 2010 because of H1N1. We're well over 100,000 in the US in fewer months with Covid. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21342903/
Perspective is good and useful, but facts are important too.

And, for the record, the government DID take lots of actions for H1N1, not the least of which was quick development and manufacturing of an H1N1 vaccine (which I realize was easier since it was a flu variant)

 

[Orion Nebula]

I hope you didn’t not see my posts in that light. As I have stated many times live your life with the risk levels you are comfortable with.

No I didn't, I was just sharing my story and what has reinforced me to be more careful. My risk level revolves around the fact that being careful seems better than not. It's not hurting my family and I to wear masks and avoid eating at restaurants, hanging out at BBQ's etc. We do our part, but there are a lot of entitled people losing it when asked to just be careful. The mask issue is ridiculous for instance, nothing like inconveniencing people.

 

[Starwarsfan2]

When the border was closed to China in late January, it is now known that roughly two *thousand* cases were already here and circulating in the United States. There was already community spread. One would expect that the wealthiest nation on the globe with a C.D.C. that was once the envy of the world would have known that. One also would have expected that our government would have used the month of February to test like mad, contract trace and isolate the infected. Nope, didn’t happen. How about making or tracking down massive quantities of PPE. Nope, that didn’t happen either. We .*still* don’t have enough tests or PPE. Our contract tracing efforts are largely a joke. And thousands more will die as a result.

If you’re not angry about the response at this point, I honestly don’t know what to say.

First case in the US was on January 21.
Fauci said on this day that the virus was not a major threat and nothing to worry about.
On Feb 2, not one question asked about the virus at the presidential debate.
Should I go on?

 

[mjkacmom]

Please don't start this again. When the border was closed to China initially, it was attacked as xenophobic by someone running for president right now and by most media. This act alone has since been credited with saving many, many lives. I really don't want points, but cannot let statements like yours stand without response.

Our states had to bid against each other for PPE and ventilators and there wasn’t enough. It was an absolute hot poop mess here in the NYC area.

 

[DisneyJamieCA]

Our states had to bid against each other for PPE and ventilators and there wasn’t enough. It was an absolute hot poop mess here in the NYC area.

I’m divided on this issue. We absolutely needed a better national response, but states have to stop looking to be the victims. NY should have been better prepared or have done more to get there. NY Government also made grave mistakes early on that accounts for some of those terrible numbers. Cuomo has to start taking responsibility for some of that.

Gov. Newsom (CA) managed to procure PPE and vents (even figuring out how to get old ones fixed) without the federal government stepping in and he runs the most populous state in the nation. While everybody was laughing at him for shutting down CA early, he was getting things done. CA is not in a great position right now and I won’t pretend like it is. But I also know it could have been a lot worse.

I am so tired of the finger pointing. We failed as a nation across the board. Both on a state level and a national level. And when we spend all this time continuing to blame, we let the problem get worse. There are many could have, should have, would have right now going on - and it’s easy for all of us to Monday morning quarterback it 5 months in.

Now before anybody thinks I’m defending the man in charge, I’m not. He has failed miserably. And continues to do so. He has not been a leader in so many things in 2020. And he has absolutely made the problem worse. But you have to look at the way this country is set up and we have fought for states’ rights. It can’t be just when it’s convenient. States have to take some responsibility here too. I’m afraid we have politicians across the board who’s egos are so big they can’t admit they got it wrong. And we’re the ones paying the price.

 

[dvcgirl67]

First case in the US was on January 21.
Fauci said on this day that the virus was not a major threat and nothing to worry about.
On Feb 2, not one question asked about the virus at the presidential debate.
Should I go on?

Ha, um, I'm not picking political sides here like you seem to be doing. Fauci was wrong then if he said that. I'm not armed with a list of Fox News talking points. I can tell you that by February 26th we were told by Dr. Nancy Messonier that we would see major disruptions to daily life. I heard that on the radio when I was driving and actually pulled over to call my husband. I'd never heard anything like that from a public health official.

I can tell you that we, as Americans, should expect a vastly better response from our federal government. From leadership, and from our C.D.C and N.I.H. Those "world class" institutions have suffered long-term repetitional harm. After this mess is all said and done, we need a 9/11-style commission with a bi-partisan committee of un-elected experts and elder stateswomen and men to do a post-mortem on how we, as Americans were utterly let down. The politics in this will take care of itself. They always do.

 

[dvcgirl67]

I’m divided on this issue. We absolutely needed a better national response, but states have to stop looking to be the victims. NY should have been better prepared or have done more to get there. NY Government also made grave mistakes early on that accounts for some of those terrible numbers. Cuomo has to start taking responsibility for some of that.

Gov. Newsom (CA) managed to procure PPE and vents (even figuring out how to get old ones fixed) without the federal government stepping in and he runs the most populous state in the nation. While everybody was laughing at him for shutting down CA early, he was getting things done. CA is not in a great position right now and I won’t pretend like it is. But I also know it could have been a lot worse.

I am so tired of the finger pointing. We failed as a nation across the board. Both on a state level and a national level. And when we spend all this time continuing to blame, we let the problem get worse. There are many could have, should have, would have right now going on - and it’s easy for all of us to Monday morning quarterback it 5 months in.

Now before anybody thinks I’m defending the man in charge, I’m not. He has failed miserably. And continues to do so. He has not been a leader in so many things in 2020. And he has absolutely made the problem worse. But you have to look at the way this country is set up and we have fought for states’ rights. It can’t be just when it’s convenient. States have to take some responsibility here too. I’m afraid we have politicians across the board who’s egos are so big they can’t admit they got it wrong. And we’re the ones paying the price.

Completely agree. Let's go back to the previous administration too. They had a gameplan, or a playbook that was apparently scrapped. But....why wasn't there a "strategic reserve" of N-95 masks? Why were governors scrambling for months for PPE, ventilators...etc? Why do we not have an "national guard" of contract tracers that can be called up at a moment's notice so that we could have gotten this thing contained before it spread like wild fire? Why is there not a massive public health PSA campaign to educate the public on how to behave in this type of situation? It can not all be blamed on one single administration. But just completely ignoring it at this point and acting like it's still not a huge disruption to the daily lives of most Americans just completely blows my mind. I thought Americans were made of tougher stuff. Turns out I was woefully wrong.

 

[Boardwalkbrats]

The H1N1 pandemic was literally an order of magnitude less than the current pandemic. ~12,000 people died in the US between April 2009 and April 2010 because of H1N1. We're well over 100,000 in the US in fewer months with Covid. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21342903/
Perspective is good and useful, but facts are important too.

And, for the record, the government DID take lots of actions for H1N1, not the least of which was quick development and manufacturing of an H1N1 vaccine (which I realize was easier since it was a flu variant)

Part of my point is we know about H1N1 even though other strains of flu have had a greater effect on society. It just doesn’t get the press coverage of a new strain. This is worthy of the press coverage, maybe not the fear mongering. Be informed not scared and look at things from multiple perspectives. Kudos for doing your own digging and having facts to discuss in a dispassionate manner. Thank you.

 

[pahoben]

Typically the US has deaths of 2.8 million/year-the US has a large population (I haven’t checked but likely third in the world after China and India). There are an estimated 10 million people in the US that are immune compromised and always at high risk of dying from respiratory infection be it viral, bacterial, fungal, etc. There has never been a suggestion to lockdown the healthy population to protect these individuals. It seems to me that this lockdown didn’t arise fundamentally from an altruistic desire to protect others but from personal fear of infection and that fear fanned by the media.

The last estimate I saw was 30,000 deaths in Medicare certified nursing homes. The policy of sending known positive cases to nursing homes had a material impact on the death rates.

The ICU’s overflowing narrative was always based on a very small number of hospitals. This is clearly seen by lack of use of the Naval hospital ships and temporary hospitals that were constructed and not used in many cities.,

Someone mentioned H1N1 as resulting in less deaths than this virus. H1N1 was more deadly for children and young healthy adults rather than older individuals and so the total lost life expectancy from H1N1 is high compared to the high risk population for this virus. Hong Kong flu had a higher number of deaths than this virus.

Here is a video of Fauci in 2009 stating that school will be restarting without an H1N1 vaccine and unfortunate that children are dying from the virus

https://www.c-span.org/video/?290959-4/infectious-disease-prevention
Thank goodness there isn’t a cable news channel that is based on showing sad deaths in the US around the clock (and there are always sad deaths around the clock). Many people would be psychologically immobilized by the constant reminder that life is transient.

 

[DopeyDame]

Ha, um, I'm not picking political sides here like you seem to be doing. Fauci was wrong then if he said that. I'm not armed with a list of Fox News talking points. I can tell you that by February 26th we were told by Dr. Nancy Messonier that we would see major disruptions to daily life. I heard that on the radio when I was driving and actually pulled over to call my husband. I'd never heard anything like that from a public health official.

I can tell you that we, as Americans, should expect a vastly better response from our federal government. From leadership, and from our C.D.C and N.I.H. Those "world class" institutions have suffered long-term repetitional harm. After this mess is all said and done, we need a 9/11-style commission with a bi-partisan committee of un-elected experts and elder stateswomen and men to do a post-mortem on how we, as Americans were utterly let down. The politics in this will take care of itself. They always do.

I remember hearing an interview when the epidimiologist (I think from UCLA) atlked about the complete failure at the CDC and that basically all of the world's pandemic response models, and certainly all the private hospitals in the US, assumed that the CDC would be providing accurate and timely leadership. Since that hasn't happened, you have hundreds of individual institutions just trying to figure it out on their own, and it;s a mess.

 

[pahoben]

I remember hearing an interview when the epidimiologist (I think from UCLA) atlked about the complete failure at the CDC and that basically all of the world's pandemic response models, and certainly all the private hospitals in the US, assumed that the CDC would be providing accurate and timely leadership. Since that hasn't happened, you have hundreds of individual institutions just trying to figure it out on their own, and it;s a mess.

The NIH plus CDC combined budget is $50 billion per year. My estimate is that for that we received essentially zero value for this pandemic.

 

[DopeyDame]

The NIH plus CDC combined budget is $50 billion per year. My estimate is that for that we received essentially zero value for this pandemic.

Yup. This was a really interesting, and damning, article about the CDC response and what went wrong:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/us/cdc-coronavirus.html

 

[mjkacmom]

Ha, um, I'm not picking political sides here like you seem to be doing. Fauci was wrong then if he said that. I'm not armed with a list of Fox News talking points. I can tell you that by February 26th we were told by Dr. Nancy Messonier that we would see major disruptions to daily life. I heard that on the radio when I was driving and actually pulled over to call my husband. I'd never heard anything like that from a public health official.

I can tell you that we, as Americans, should expect a vastly better response from our federal government. From leadership, and from our C.D.C and N.I.H. Those "world class" institutions have suffered long-term repetitional harm. After this mess is all said and done, we need a 9/11-style commission with a bi-partisan committee of un-elected experts and elder stateswomen and men to do a post-mortem on how we, as Americans were utterly let down. The politics in this will take care of itself. They always do.

And we are in July, and there is still a lack of supplies. https://thehill.com/policy/healthca...rtage-in-protective-gear-amid-new-coronavirus

 

[Searc]

I’m divided on this issue. We absolutely needed a better national response, but states have to stop looking to be the victims. NY should have been better prepared or have done more to get there. NY Government also made grave mistakes early on that accounts for some of those terrible numbers. Cuomo has to start taking responsibility for some of that.

Gov. Newsom (CA) managed to procure PPE and vents (even figuring out how to get old ones fixed) without the federal government stepping in and he runs the most populous state in the nation. While everybody was laughing at him for shutting down CA early, he was getting things done. CA is not in a great position right now and I won’t pretend like it is. But I also know it could have been a lot worse.

I am so tired of the finger pointing. We failed as a nation across the board. Both on a state level and a national level. And when we spend all this time continuing to blame, we let the problem get worse. There are many could have, should have, would have right now going on - and it’s easy for all of us to Monday morning quarterback it 5 months in.

Now before anybody thinks I’m defending the man in charge, I’m not. He has failed miserably. And continues to do so. He has not been a leader in so many things in 2020. And he has absolutely made the problem worse. But you have to look at the way this country is set up and we have fought for states’ rights. It can’t be just when it’s convenient. States have to take some responsibility here too. I’m afraid we have politicians across the board who’s egos are so big they can’t admit they got it wrong. And we’re the ones paying the price.

States literally had PPE stolen out from under them by the federal government, in case you've forgotten that gem. Hard to be prepared when the supplies you ordered to BE prepared were stolen.

 

[UberClaire]

The NIH plus CDC combined budget is $50 billion per year. My estimate is that for that we received essentially zero value for this pandemic.

Major mistakes were made by the CDC, but it's not right to lump the NIH in with them.