2019-2020 coronavirus pandemic (Vaccination 2021 Edition)

Silvanus

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To be fair, the CDC has recommended 33 as that number, but the CDC has also recommended against large economic shutdowns in all but the most dire circumstances, so it's pretty obvious that states and private entities have been ignoring CDC guidance the whole time.
Can I get a source on that CDC recommendation?

NB, I'm not particularly doubting you on this. I just quickly googled it to read their reasoning and couldn't find it. It's probably just me not looking in the right place.
 

tstorm823

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Can I get a source on that CDC recommendation?

NB, I'm not particularly doubting you on this. I just quickly googled it to read their reasoning and couldn't find it. It's probably just me not looking in the right place.
As is tradition, google gets worse every day, particularly with anything remotely political. I had to do a bit of work myself to find any source of the things I clearly remember.

And like, they're not helping with crap like this:

Here's something for for school closures, where they recommend against except in cases of large scale community transmission where health care staffing is significantly impacted.
 

Phoenixmgs

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As is tradition, google gets worse every day, particularly with anything remotely political. I had to do a bit of work myself to find any source of the things I clearly remember.

And like, they're not helping with crap like this:

Here's something for for school closures, where they recommend against except in cases of large scale community transmission where health care staffing is significantly impacted.
I wonder when they recommended these things because it took them like until August IIRC to say the spread was airborne. Lockdowns are like a very expensive drug that doesn't work like remdesivir. Closing schools has been pretty dumb from the start of all this.
 

Dwarvenhobble

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That doesn't have anything to do with the WHO's restating of how to do a PCR test.
Yes it does.

If they're changing the standards for what to do to consider a person to have Covid now based on PCR testing then testing once vs twice will have differences in the numbers when you eliminate false positives.
 

Phoenixmgs

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Yes it does.

If they're changing the standards for what to do to consider a person to have Covid now based on PCR testing then testing once vs twice will have differences in the numbers when you eliminate false positives.
No it doesn't. They're not changing the standards. There's no reason to really test people twice now or before, the tests are accurate enough that you don't need to confirm the results anyway. You might test people again to see if they're negative during recovery but that doesn't change case numbers whether the likelihood of false positives changes. If the same person tests positive twice (say a month apart), it's not a new case.
 

Dwarvenhobble

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No it doesn't. They're not changing the standards. There's no reason to really test people twice now or before, the tests are accurate enough that you don't need to confirm the results anyway. You might test people again to see if they're negative during recovery but that doesn't change case numbers whether the likelihood of false positives changes. If the same person tests positive twice (say a month apart), it's not a new case.
So you're saying they're not testing people twice and the new WHO guidelines saying to test people twice aren't being used anyway?
 

tstorm823

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https://thehill.com/policy/finance/...negotiating-income-limits-for-stimulus-checks

$2,000 $1,400 checks out the door immediately eventually for everyone those who qualify after we negotiate ourselves down and then negotiate down even further once we actually bring it to a vote.

So how is your country doing on their Covid relief plans for their citizens?
I don't personally know of any country that has put more money out in covid relief than the US. People brag about Canada's 2000 a month to those who lost income, but that's less than the US's$ 600 a week in additional unemployment that was running through the shutdowns. Very few places I'm aware of have done any kind of broad direct payment like the initial $1200, or the recent $600, or the proposed $1400 more.

How is their country doing with relief plans? Worse.
 

tippy2k2

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I don't personally know of any country that has put more money out in covid relief than the US. People brag about Canada's 2000 a month to those who lost income, but that's less than the US's$ 600 a week in additional unemployment that was running through the shutdowns. Very few places I'm aware of have done any kind of broad direct payment like the initial $1200, or the recent $600, or the proposed $1400 more.

How is their country doing with relief plans? Worse.
Didn't that $600 a week for unemployment end? I'm getting conflicting information as I try to Google it but most of the sources I've seen have said the $600 a month Fed Unemployment ended in December (so you have to hope your state isn't a shit show as it's now on them to support everyone).
 
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tstorm823

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Didn't that $600 a month for unemployment end? I'm getting conflicting information as I try to Google it but most of the sources I've seen have said the $600 a month Fed Unemployment ended in December (so you have to hope your state isn't a shit show as it's now on them to support everyone).
It did end, and it was halved long before that. But we're doing comparisons at the moment, and for comparison, Canada's emergency monthly payment program ended in September, the programs replacing it since are equally time-limited to 6 months for individuals, and apparently 441,000 people in Canada may have sought the funds while ineligible and are being asked to pay some or all of it back.
 

Cheetodust

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https://thehill.com/policy/finance/...negotiating-income-limits-for-stimulus-checks

$2,000 $1,400 checks out the door immediately eventually for everyone those who qualify after we negotiate ourselves down and then negotiate down even further once we actually bring it to a vote.

So how is your country doing on their Covid relief plans for their citizens?
I don't personally know of any country that has put more money out in covid relief than the US. People brag about Canada's 2000 a month to those who lost income, but that's less than the US's$ 600 a week in additional unemployment that was running through the shutdowns. Very few places I'm aware of have done any kind of broad direct payment like the initial $1200, or the recent $600, or the proposed $1400 more.

How is their country doing with relief plans? Worse.
Any full time worker out of work has been getting 350 a week since back in March. Part timers were cut to 200 a week a while back because for the first few months anyone unemployed got 350 a week. 350 a week is about minimum wage after tax for a full week work.

Also there's been a couple of wage subsidy schemes where companies who had substantial loss of earnings could get assistance paying salaries.

Was the US paying 600 a month or a week. You and tstorm said different things.

Obviously 600 a week is better than 350 a week but 600 a month is considerably worse.
 

Agema

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How is their country doing with relief plans? Worse.
Are they?

The USA ranks highly on specific covid-19 funding.

However, to contrast that, most countries have automatic systems that click into place with income disruption, often called "automatic stabilisers". Basic unemployment benefits, etc. The USA traditionally has very weak benefits packages, far lower than other Western countries in terms of % median household income. So how generous the USA is really being cannot be evaluated without consideration of these basic support systems. In many cases, of course, the modest specific covid-19 support from countries like France and Germany reflects the fact that their basic automatic support systems already look after the population to such a degree that they don't need much specific covid-19 top-up.

And finally, let's also bear in mind that by splashing out money more indisciminately as the USA has, a substantial amount is frittered away on people who don't need it.
 

tippy2k2

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Any full time worker out of work has been getting 350 a week since back in March. Part timers were cut to 200 a week a while back because for the first few months anyone unemployed got 350 a week. 350 a week is about minimum wage after tax for a full week work.

Also there's been a couple of wage subsidy schemes where companies who had substantial loss of earnings could get assistance paying salaries.

Was the US paying 600 a month or a week. You and tstorm said different things.

Obviously 600 a week is better than 350 a week but 600 a month is considerably worse.
A week, not a month. I put the wrong date in.

But again, to my knowledge, the $600 a week thing has ended and it sounds like from what TStorm stated, it ended a while ago. And at least to the best of my knowledge, The Plague has very much not ended yet...
 

tstorm823

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Any full time worker out of work has been getting 350 a week since back in March. Part timers were cut to 200 a week a while back because for the first few months anyone unemployed got 350 a week. 350 a week is about minimum wage after tax for a full week work.

Also there's been a couple of wage subsidy schemes where companies who had substantial loss of earnings could get assistance paying salaries.

Was the US paying 600 a month or a week. You and tstorm said different things.

Obviously 600 a week is better than 350 a week but 600 a month is considerably worse.
Good catch, I missed that in Tippy's response. It was weekly. $600 per week, so roughly $2400-$3000 a month, give or take, of federal unemployment on top of whatever states were paying in unemployement, which is typically salary dependent, for the first 4 months or so of the pandemic. That was later backed down to $300 a week on top of state unemployment, which I thought had just ended, but in preparing my argument for Agema, my state's website seems to suggest there's $300 a week in federal money still coming until March 31st, 2021.

And then on top of that, there was a $1200 direct payment for 90% of adults, $700 for each dependent minor, another $600 payment, a proposed $1400 payment. Your wage subsidy program? Ours was $669 billion dollars.
Are they?

The USA ranks highly on specific covid-19 funding.

However, to contrast that, most countries have automatic systems that click into place with income disruption, often called "automatic stabilisers". Basic unemployment benefits, etc. The USA traditionally has very weak benefits packages, far lower than other Western countries in terms of % median household income. So how generous the USA is really being cannot be evaluated without consideration of these basic support systems. In many cases, of course, the modest specific covid-19 support from countries like France and Germany reflects the fact that their basic automatic support systems already look after the population to such a degree that they don't need much specific covid-19 top-up.

And finally, let's also bear in mind that by splashing out money more indisciminately as the USA has, a substantial amount is frittered away on people who don't need it.
The US federally has a weak benefits package because we have state and federal systems. In Pennsylvania, my unemployment would cover roughly half my full-time pay, up to nearly $600 a week. What do you have over there? Google tells me "jobseekers alloweance" is like £75 a week in the UK when I try and find what the equivalent is, and I'm just gonna ask you about it because I can't believe that's seriously a thing. Cause that's a low number.
 

Satinavian

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The US federally has a weak benefits package because we have state and federal systems. In Pennsylvania, my unemployment would cover roughly half my full-time pay, up to nearly $600 a week. What do you have over there? Google tells me "jobseekers alloweance" is like £75 a week in the UK when I try and find what the equivalent is, and I'm just gonna ask you about it because I can't believe that's seriously a thing. Cause that's a low number.
We have between 60% and 67% of your last netto up to 7100€ per month for up to one year after losing work. And you get also inceldibly cheap health and care insurance on top of that.

After that or if you haven't had any job before, you get around 400€ per month, children get less, but they do get their own money seperately. Additionally you get money for housing heating and a couple of other things deemed necessary to live. And of course you get free healthcare etc.


Now that are just the regular rules. For Corona specifically there were huge job subsidising for basically everything that was at risk because of the pandemic. So much in fact that unemployment numbers are not much different from the years before at all.

In Total, Germany seems to have spent $316 billion directly for Corona and given out $1.2 trillion in liquidity support whish is way more than the US has don per capita.

https://www.csis.org/analysis/comparing-us-japanese-and-german-fiscal-responses-covid-19
 
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tstorm823

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We have between 60% and 67% of your last netto up to 7100€ per month for up to one year after losing work. And you get also inceldibly cheap health and care insurance on top of that.
So for the people who are actually in need of the money, you're comparing 50% to 60ish%? I would call that comparable. Like, in no way would I say the US spends the most on these safety nets specifically, but Agema was claiming the US is so far different from other countries that comparing covid responses isn't fair, claiming we don't match on things like "basic unemployment benefits".

So much in fact that unemployment numbers are not much different from the years before at all.
I don't think that's a consequence of the subsidies. I think that's a consequence of the shutdowns. You had schools reopened in April.
 

Agema

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The US federally has a weak benefits package because we have state and federal systems. In Pennsylvania, my unemployment would cover roughly half my full-time pay, up to nearly $600 a week. What do you have over there? Google tells me "jobseekers alloweance" is like £75 a week in the UK when I try and find what the equivalent is, and I'm just gonna ask you about it because I can't believe that's seriously a thing. Cause that's a low number.
£75 (~$100) is just the raw, basic free spend to do with as the individual wishes, although it has to cover many basics like food. There are a lot of other benefits available as needed. Although the UK is another low-welfare country, albeit not quite as bad as the US average.