California's Theme Parks Are a Step Closer to Reopening

It's funny how all 6 of Disney's U.S theme parks are in Orange County.

I guess New York will have to settle for Orange County Choppers as their claim to fame.

Calling it now...Knott's Berry Farm will be the first theme park in Southern California to reopen, and every park in the region will be open by the end of July. Personally, I'm banking on an early July target, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a couple weeks earlier or later. Now that parks are opening in other places in the country, if there aren't significant increases in hospitalizations over the next two to three weeks, it's going to be really compelling evidence that they're not the health hazard some make them out to be.

AJ, a rate of hospitalization change over 2-3 weeks means very little. A bad rate of transmission for COVID is 3, ie for every person who is infected, that transmit it to 3 others during the entirety of their illness. For example, if 100 people go into a park maybe they transmit it to 100 others, who then take the infection all over the state or country. These people won't show signs of infection for offer a week, and maybe hospitalised 2 weeks later. It's the 3 people each of them infect who turn up to hospital 3-4 weeks later who then show a small upturn in numbers, but by them they've already transmitted it to 3 others (900 new cases now).

The delay between a change in behavior and is subsequent effect on reported numbers is closer to a month. New York was closing down mid March, but didn't see a reduction in new cases until about 8-10 April due to this lag. Over a 2 week period, numbers will continue along whatever trajectory they were before, perhaps offering a false sense of security.

Grant--yet. Georgia reopened fully first. yet the last few days they have had significantly lower death numbers than most of the other states of a similar size. the current problem states seem to be ones who had longer lockdowns with all democrat gov's. Illinois, Penn, virginia, Minnesota and north carolina. Not because they are all demo's (though it prob contributes) but also because there seems to be a certain amount of randomness to the transmission. Although being apart must help, stuff still happens sometimes more in the harsher social distancing states. 1 also has to always remember to consider suicides, depression, drug deaths, long term depression and mental illness due to lockdown. And other bad unintentional causes.

Grant, I get your point, but let's try running the math with some realistic numbers...

As of today, it is estimated that there are around 100,000 active COVID infections in the US, and if we assume around 40% are asymptomatic, then 0.013% of those in this country are asymptomatic carriers. Since the rumored day one capacity of Magic Kingdom is 15,000, we'll use that as park capacity. If 100 people at the park had COVID, that would mean 0.67% of attendees that day have it, which is a ridiculous percentage. A more realistic estimate, assuming that all of those showing symptoms are caught by the screening procedures and all asymptomatic patrons slip through, is that there will be about two people in the park on any given day carrying it. Now, assuming each of them infects someone else (unlikely even without the restrictions in place, even more unlikely with them, but we'll assume it happens), four people leave the park with COVID. They infect three people each, which makes eight infections (two who caught it at the park, six from them) that wouldn't have happened without the park, and then if each of those three infect three more, we've got a grand total of 26 infections. Now, approximately 25% of those infected require hospital care (treating all infected as equal), so theoretically one day at the park should add six new hospital cases. That is a tiny amount compared to overall infection rates, and should be well within the ability of a stable medical system to handle.

Now, let's assume that this worst case scenario continues indefinitely. That means each week, hospitals would need to deal with 42 additional patients due to said park being open. Using Florida as an example, they've got around 2,000 hospitalized due to COVID in a medical system able to handle 20,000. Even if all nine major parks added 42 patients per week each, that would be less than a 20% increase and still less than 15% of capacity, even not accounting for those leaving the hospital. California's numbers are a little different, but the ratios are similar and the point still stands.

No matter what we do, cases are going to rise. We need to be careful to look at them in context and ask if it's really an issue. Personally, I'd consider a spike significant enough to be worthy of concern one that would threaten to overwhelm healthcare systems if it were sustained for a month. Anything less than that, and we probably need to let things play out.

Since gov's have pretty much done away with due process and the constitution with many of the executive orders anyway. We could simply not allow anyone who's drivers license is over 65 yrs entry. That would reduce the amount of hospitalized in the example above to a really really small number.