The Failed Experiment of Social Distancing

American Greatness ^ | May 4,2020 | By Julie Kelly

[Hojczyk]

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former head of the Food and Drug Administration and a lead booster of social distancing, admitted Sunday that the draconian measures aren’t working as the experts promised.

The concerning thing here is that we’re looking at the prospect that this may be a persistent spread,” Gottlieb said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” further noting 20,000 to 30,000 new reported cases per day despite intense lockdown orders in most states.

“While mitigation didn’t fail, I think it’s fair to say that it didn’t work as well as we expected,” he said. “We expected that we would start seeing more significant declines in new cases and deaths around the nation at this point, and we’re just not seeing that.”

That’s hardly the sort of settled science that justifies the abrupt and costly disruption to the American way of life wrought by social distancing.

The alarming reality is that social distancing never has been tested on a massive scale in the modern age; its current formula was conceived during George W. Bush’s administration and met with much-deserved skepticism.

“People could not believe that the strategy would be effective or even feasible,” one scientist told the New York Times last month. A high school science project—no, I am not joking—added more weight to the concept.

[AFB-XYZ]

That’s because the populace has, in large part, become pussified. Thank God for those of us who are too stubborn to conform.

Even so, many of the conformists are still teachable. Some even wake up one day and realize, out of the blue, the magnitude of the stupidity they had bought into. It does give a little bit of hope.

Question is, is there enough time left on the clock?

[Alberta's Child]

You saw plenty of that idiocy right here on FR. A lot of “freedom-loving conservatives” on this website have been exposed as frauds over the last couple of months.

[CodeToad]

“Question is, is there enough time left on the clock”

I don’t think there is. The economic brick wall will happen within 45 days when all that ‘stimulus’ money runs out. We’re not seeing sanity returning. We are seeing dumber and dumber crap that will keep the economy down. Incumbents run on the economy because people vote with their wallets, so with 50+ million unemployed by November (30+ million unemployed today) and a million small businesses destroyed and the people subjected to more and more insanely stupid rules, Trump won’t win. He barely won in 2016, something like 70,000 votes in a few precincts. There is enthusiasm in his base, but they don’t number enough to elect him.

[exDemMom]

Actually, it is working.

If the virus were spreading at its initial rate of growth, there would now be around 26.4 million cases worldwide. The actual number of cases is 3.6 million. That means that actual cases are 86% below what would have happened without social distancing policies.

I have a more difficult time predicting what would have happened in the US without social distancing, because I do not have early numbers for the US, and cases in the US result from multiple introductions of virus into the country. This skews the data terribly. That said, I still see a significant drop in the spread of US cases. If this trend continues, we will eliminate Covid-19 in the US.

[kosciusko51]

It’s called “security theater.” Makes you think you are safer than you are.

[rightwingcrazy]

“We expected that we would start seeing more significant declines in new cases and deaths around the nation at this point, and we’re just not seeing that.”

“Flattening the curve” is like pulling the Band-aid off slowly. If “we” expected otherwise, then “we” were not paying attention.

[Laslo Fripp]

You nailed it👍

[John W]

And I’m concerned he will be facing a replacement such as Hillary who will smoke him this time given the conditions you mentioned and widespread voter fraud.

[John W]

Can you show your math work on this?

[AndyJackson]

I cannot believe we have another fool as a former FDA director spouting off nonsense. Or else he is a self-serving fraud deepster, which looking at his profile is very likely.

The point of social distancing was to "flatten the curve." What does this idiot think flatten the curve means? Well it means taking strong enough mitigation actions that you drive Rt down from a 10 fold per week exponential increase in cases to below 1.0 so that the total number of new daily cases is on a decline. That is where we now are. And we did it with social distancing as did every other country that has dealt with this.

And don't you flubros scream well what about Muh Sweden. The solipsistic Swedes were already social distancing long before anyone ever heard about the CHICOM flu. Go google it and you will discover that the Swedes brag about it.

[exDemMom]

There seem to be a lot of asymptomatic people that test positive. It may spread like crazy, but it doesn’t seem to be all that deadly except for the old and sick.

Actually, not. The antibody tests that have been touted as showing incredible numbers of asymptomatic infections are not that accurate; for all I know, they are showing the number of people who have had ordinary colds caused by coronaviruses.

The best data possible, in which 100% of potentially infected people were tested, comes from the Diamond Princess cruise ship. At the time of testing, 52% of the positive cases did not have symptoms. This does not mean that they remained asymptomatic. They also could have had symptoms that were so mild that the patients attributed them to something else. I found one analysis that found that something like 13% of the Diamond Princess cases were asymptomatic; wish I could find that again. What is NOT the case is that gadzillions of people are walking around infected without any symptom whatsoever. That is actually a nightmare scenario.

[Fiji Hill]

>[Anti]-social distancing is the Democrat/Left’s only weapon to stop those giant Trump rallies. It will fail as people learn — some very much slower than others — that they’ve been duped by “The Experts” ... with masks, twice duped.

When one learns that he's been "had," his natural reaction is to fly into a rage. And we're starting to see that, with protest rallies popping up nationwide. Here's hoping the growing public outrage will remain directed at the Democrat Left.

[CodeToad]

Trump can still win, but he has to first recognize right now that this situation is an existential threat to this presidency. He needs to take action to open up the country that he claims only he can open. He needs to prosecute the democrap criminals. Right now, even his base is looking the fact that they have been economically harmed while democraps have enjoyed their crime spree.

[cymbeline]

“Is the other half (essential) not able to spread this?”

That half is able to spread it.

But we can’t go without food and medical care or we’d kill ourselves by starvation and needless fatalities due to injury and sickness.

[exDemMom]

Can you show your math work on this?

Hmm, that is a little complicated. I cannot insert a table with my numbers (that is beyond my html skills), but I can insert a screen shot:

To generate this projection, I set an R0 value of 2.5 and determined that one round of infection was occurring every 9 days. I do not have all of the actuals because I did not start keeping records until Mar 12. However, you can see that the actuals were close to the projected numbers through Apr 2.

Social distancing measures began to be widely implemented during the last week of March. Since the virus has an incubation period of 2-14 days, the effect of social distancing started to become apparent on Apr 11, with a 26% drop in actual cases vs. projected. While the decrease might have been taking place earlier, I am only looking at 9 day incremental changes for my projections. At my last analysis on Apr 29, the actual number of cases was 78% below projection. This means that the social distancing is working.

This same data is presented in the graph below. I prefer graphs for presenting information in an easily understandable format. Also, I can use the equation on the graph to make a comparison of projected vs. actual on any day, but have kept the 9 day increment just because there are a LOT of numbers by now. I also have not made an adjusted model to project case growth under current conditions.

I must stress that we are not out of the woods yet, and if we stop the quarantine now, case growth will pick right back up again.

Worldwide case growth is still on an upward trajectory, but the growth is slowing. US case growth is decreasing, which means that our policies are effective (despite all of the complaints about them). I think the President needs to be out there front and center, stressing the success of the social distancing. If you want to see the trajectory graphs, I can post those, too.

[depressed in 06]

It is time for Fauci to retire, so, he can become CNN’s expert, and, get some real money for being wrong.

[Captain Peter Blood]

All we have done is suppress the rate and yes when we open the case rate will go back up, but we can’t stay closed either. Whether we like it or not it has got to run it’s course like any other disease.

[Captain Peter Blood]

You got it.

[who knows what evil?]

Spot on! Standing and applauding!

[The Great RJ]

Our mother’s advice was just as effective...wash your hands before meals, after going to the bathroom and after you cough or sneeze; don’t sneeze or cough on people; use a tissue to wipe or blow your nose and don’t touch your face with dirty hands. Most of use learned this by about age 5 or 6.