My Optimism Has Pretty Much Vanished

Walt Disney World
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Why? Disney theme parks are literally the worst case for virus transmission. You have 57,000 people in close proximity to each other, all touching the same surfaces then their face, many of whom are kids who won’t follow distancing guidelines or wear masks. Many of the typical activities are literally shoulder to shoulder. Then they go home to every corner of the country and the world and you do it all over again tomorrow. What is the alternative? Just let people go in there and all get sick? At least at sporting events you’re mostly sitting next to the same 20 people the whole time. At WDW, you’re constantly mixing with tens of thousands of people and all touching the same stuff.

Edit: Just did some back of the envelope math. Right now, about 0.17% of Americans currently have it (active cases, not closed) that we know of. If you randomly selected 400 people, the odds of at least one of the them having it are almost exactly 50/50. If you select 1000 people randomly, the odds are 82%. If you select 10,000 people, the odds are 99.9993%. If you randomly select 57,000 people to enter the Magic Kingdom on a given day, you are guaranteed that one of them has it and more likely about a hundred people have it. (Yes, I know that the population of Disney World is not a random sampling of the US, but this is just for the purposes of estimation).

I am just as excited to go back and have literally been annoying the crap out of my family complaining about our cancelled trip and getting them to promise me that we’ll go as soon as things reopen. I want as much as anyone for the parks to be open. But what’s different today as compared to March 15th? More people have it and we’re no closer to stopping its spread by means other than social distancing. If we reopen things today, we will perfectly resume the exponential growth we were on on March 15th. It’s sad. It’s sucks. But it’s the reality and recognizing it as such will keep people safe.

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The point isn’t to protect everyone in the park. The point is that if enough people cannot contract the virus, either because they’re had it or because they’ve been vaccinated, then it doesn’t have anywhere to spread in the general population and cannot continue to multiply exponentially. So instead of 1 in 1000 of the population having it, you quickly drop to 1 in 100,000 or even less. And for the people that do get it, it has very few people to spread to so even with no social distancing at all it cannot spread exponentially.

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Telling a company they can’t open for 12-18 months is like pulling the plug. 12-18 months for all those folks to be unemployed? For theme parks (not just WDW) to declare bankruptcy?

The more at risk folks will self select. How many people contract the seasonal flu? We don’t stop life in its tracks. The deal was flatten the curve. We had new insight and people get to calculate their own risks?

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I worry we flattened the curve TOO much. Not enough people got it?

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Again, what’s the alternative? If you say to Disney, “You can open whenever you want” or “You can open when the rest of the essential jobs open” then you’re also saying, “We leave the decision to weigh profits vs. safety up to you, a publicly traded company.”

Self selection is not a solution here. Each carrier of the seasonal flu transmits it to 1.3 people on average. Without social distancing, each carrier of corona virus transmits it to 2.6ish people on average. “That’s not a big difference” you might say. At those rates, on average it takes seasonal flu 53 generations to go from 1 person to 1 million people. It takes corona virus 14 generations (or about 2 months). It’s also much more lethal (though still only around 1% ish compared to 0.1% for flu).

The problem is, high risk people can’t completely avoid contact. Their only hope is if their nurse, their delivery guy, their plumber, their teacher, the children, their cable guy, their pastor, and all the people at their grocery store do not have it. If ANY of those people have it…they have a non-trivial chance of dying. They rely on all those people staying at home and not getting it in order to be safe.

What does that mean? There’s a direct proportion of people who get it to people who die (about 1% with access to health care, about 3-5% without, so let’s say 1% for optimism). The only way out of that is a vaccine or more successful treatments. There is no sense of “let’s slowly pass this around at a rate the health care system can handle it.” That’s obviously better than letting it spread faster than the health care system can handle it, but if, at any point, 60% of the population get it, even if all of them had complete and unfettered access to amazing health care, we have failed. Millions will have died. There’s no way around it. Flattening the curve is not so that we can pass it around at a “manageable” rate. Flattening the curve is so that people are dying more slowly while we search for better treatments and ultimately a vaccine.

Until we have those things, we must continue to flatten the curve. (Flattening the curve may include, in addition to social distancing and shelter-in-place orders, more robust testing infrastructure, contact tracing, forced quarantines, or any number of light to draconian measures)

Edit: I suppose one other possible position is “1% of 190 million people dying is better than shutting everything down for 12 months.” That’s certainly a defensible position to take. But there isn’t a solution that isn’t one of those two things (that we know of yet).

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From the standpoint of the hospital I work at that is exactly what flattening the curve means.

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The whole point of flattening the curve is to allow the hospitals a more manageable rate and to allow more time to find a treatment. And treatment may not be a vaccine. However the “cure” cannot be worse than the virus. There has been a report that drug overdose deaths have already increased for my area. For our state there has been a decrease of calls to our child abuse hotline by 50%. And how many millions are on unemployment? Eventually that money will run out. Then you will be dealing with homelessness, starvation, and more crime. I’m sorry but 12-18 months is unreasonable to keep any business closed for this. People are going to die, whether it is directly from the virus or for some other reason. Being alive is a risk and our leaders need to decide where the balance is in all this.

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I’d like to back up to the point this was said:

Whether they said it or not isn’t as important as whether it happens (or can happen) or not. Florida, as a state, relies almost exclusively on travel as its industry. Well, that and oranges. :slight_smile:

Actually, THREE of the top FOUR industries for Florida are impacted by the pandemic. #1, Tourism. #2, Agriculture (not impacted much). #3, International Trade. #4, Aerospace and Aviation.

Can Florida survive a 12-18 month shutdown? Nope.

So, instead, there will have to be set in place a new normal, where people can start interacting with the economy at least to a certain degree.

The same is really true across the country to varying degrees. In Michigan, for example, we rely heavily on the automotive industry. But if we can’t produce cars, and the demand for vehicles drops because no one is even driving, the economy will collapse.

So, things will have to open up, regardless of the situation with COVID-19. But what this means is a much higher level of on-going social distancing measures, etc.

What does that look like? I think pretty much what we’re seeing today, only with more people ALLOWED to return to work. But it will require rules governing how people can congregate. WDW may be allowed to open, but with strict limits on how many people can be in areas. Likely, for a time, shows will be cancelled (fireworks, parades, FOTLK, etc), and we will have hand sanitizers everywhere. Masks may or may not be required. But if we keep as many people OUTSIDE as compared to INSIDE queues, it can be significantly safer, with the natural UV rays of the sun doing much of the sanitation work on the outside.

This reduction will mean fewer people go to the parks, etc.

But I think it isn’t feasible, as much as people wish it could be, for things to remain shut down like they are now.

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I actually gave you a :heart: @ryan1 - which I am always very careful with where you are concerned.

Great breakdown on Florida’s livelihoods.

I have had to remind myself of this after most of the briefings I’ve heard from my own governor, the other governors I listen to, and the White House. So much is said. Only so much is done.
I think in some cases (not necessarily this one) things get floated out a little to see what the reaction is before anything is acted on.

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Looting is no small fear of my sister’s.

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I suspect that wdw Is like many school districts. You have to solve the bus issue before you can even begin to think about what will happen when people (theme park guests or kids to school) get off the bus. At wdw it is the bus/tram/boat/skyliner/monorail.

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Amen!

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In terms of being allowed to return to work, they need to figure out the school/child care issue first. Our state right now has a 5/4 date for schools to potentially re-open (which I don’t believe will actually happen). But what happens if 5/4 schools remains closed but they slowly start to usher people back to work? Many do not have a child care option. And, if they push the opening of child care into the summer, how can you expect parents to return to work there as well?

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Larger school districts also have different issues. My school district have schools that have between 700-1500 students in them. We have 30 buses with 70+ students on them. What do we do? Half sessions? Every other day? How do parents work around that?

How can we prevent a child that lives with a grandparent from being exposed? How do we teach never getting within 6 feet ?

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I hadn’t thought much about Disney transportation issues. Like probably most others, I’ve been thinking more of how the parks can open and operate with new restrictions. Imagine waiting for a Magic Kingdom bus running at 1/3 or 1/4 normal capacity. I wonder if we’ll see a transition period when the parks reopen where it becomes a must to have a car on property. I think a lot of aspects that collectively make up “the bubble” are at risk for awhile.

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I’m not sure Disney transportation is a huge hurdle IF a few requirements are mandated.

First, that everyone must wear masks while on Disney transportation.

Second, that Disney provides hand sanitizer the moment you enter/exit any transportation.

Enforcement will be tricky, of course. Buses would be easier to enforce. Trams to/from parking lot would be more difficult, and they may actually need to eliminate Tram service in the short term. Fewer guests should mean the lots won’t be as full…but if you want to drive, you’ll have a long walk to have to plan on.

If, at first, Disney doesn’t even allow off site guests, then the monorail/ferry won’t need to be used. They can shift entirely to buses, which they can better enforce.

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  • There is a very effective vaccine for seasonal flu.
  • COVID has a fatality rate ten times that of seasonal flu.
  • SARS-CoV2 is appoximately 2.5x more transmissible than seasonal flu.
  • 2010 to 2020 seasonal flu killed between 12,000 and 60,000 people in the U.S. COVID has killed 33,000 in six weeks.
  • Comparisons of death by COVID vs seasonal flu never mention how many of the latter deaths happen in unvaccinated people.
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Thank you for these numbers.

I don’t understand this one.

Total? Or each year?

I’m an RN in a busy hospital in WNY. Two winters ago we had 23 of our 28 beds filled with flu+ patients one week. Worst flu season in my memory. Saturday (last I worked) we had Covid patient whom we discharged home. That one person isn’t going to do much for herd immunity. :slightly_frowning_face:

(16 of our beds were empty. And 11 had non-Covid cardiac patients.)

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CDC was reporting 22,000 seasonal flu deaths on 21 March 2020 with a fatality rate in the pandemic category. I think this largely got overlooked . . .

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The range of annual deaths for the years 2010-2020 was 12,000 to 60,000 per year.

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