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Thanks for the info. I sure remember those times where I had to go up the garden state expressway (or was it parkway?) and stop about every fifteen minutes to pay my 25 cents. I am sort of surprised that they are not cleaning your booths. And I certainly agree that you could pass on the virus to so many folks.
FYI I live outside of Austin. They built a tollway here a few years back to by-pass I35 which goes thru downtown Austin. Their idea was to cut down on the 18 wheeler traffic that causes major traffic tie ups in the downtown area. For the first two years the tollway had toll booths and then they put in the technology to either read a chip in a car sticker or take a picture of you license plate and mail you a bill. So when the changeover came, all of the toll collectors were laid off. And to this day all of the toll booths still exist.
And the worse part is that only the corporate trucks (i.e. Walmart) use the bypass. They didn’t give the independent truckers a break so they still use the Austin downtown link and traffic is still just as bad.

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That’s odd.

They have a lower death rate than South Dakota, even though SD went into full lockdown.

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We know a small percent can perish.

For that age about 0.02 percent.

Could have been a multitude of causes.

Having a CV 19 party is stupid.

So is making it a boogyman.

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I ain’t worried, I got EZ Pass.

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Garden state parkway. Yeah most states have gone to reading plates for those that don’t have an EZ-Pass. But not New Jersey. Before this entire epidemic started we were 9 years away. That was the time table. I’m sure that’s been pushed up considerably now. My guess is 4-5 years now. They have to finish their roadway expansion of 50 miles first.

Did you know it costs 2 million per mile of roadway in New Jersey? Second place isn’t even close. And I’m talking per mile for just one lane. If it’s like the last expansion it will be 8 lanes and 8 shoulders for 50 miles. Do that math.

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That is insane. Why is the cost so high?

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Middle men would be my guess. Administration isn’t cheap.

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I didn’t see the actual breakdown of the costs. I just know NJ was the highest at 2 million per (one lane) mile, and some other north eastern state came in second place at 600k per mile. My guess is that it’s not including labor. Why do I say that? Because the entire project is estimated to cost 24 billion. I’m guessing a lot of that is labor.

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Sweden has about the same population as New York City, yet it had a small fraction of the cases and deaths without a draconian lockdown. New York State had a much worse experience than Sweden as shown below:

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A key difference is that Sweden protected the elderly.

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Is the country of Sweden as dense as the city of New York?

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NYC is obviously much more compact and could it be since it is so compact and was hit so hard that the herd immunity that Sweden was trying to get but failed, parts of NYC might already have it? I remember Cuomo himself saying around 30 some percent of NYC had tested positive and that was in late April, the number needed is 60-70% assuming the antibodies prevent a second infection and for how long.

“Antibody test results and reports from local health care clinics suggest that somewhere around 70% of the people in places such as Jackson Heights in Queens and Borough Park in Brooklyn have already had the coronavirus. This could mean they have inadvertently achieved a level of communal protection that has eluded countries that deliberately tried to get it with deadly consequences.”

Who knows maybe NYC is close to achieving what Sweden couldn’t by exactly what you said they were to spread out.

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Well, the NY governor and mayor are extremely dense.

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There are many factors that affect the outcomes. The fallacy is that the government policy is the only thing that matters.

Here are a few factors that are frequently ignored:

  1. Cold viruses may provide some immunity:

Different parts of the world may already have some immunity in the population because they were exposed to an earlier strain of cold virus.

  1. People with mild or asymptomatic cases may develop T cell immunity so there are large numbers of people with resistance that don’t show up on the antibody tests:
    SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells were detectable in antibody-seronegative family members and individuals with a history of asymptomatic or mild COVID-19.
    Robust T cell immunity in convalescent individuals with asymptomatic or mild COVID-19

  2. There are different strains of the virus in different parts of the world and virus behavior changes over time:
    Mutated European strain of coronavirus more contagious but less potent

  3. Climate and seasonal factors affect transmission: Respiratory viruses are spread more easily during the winter in temperate areas of the world. In the tropics they tend to increase during the wet season.

  4. Different demographics: The virus is much more dangerous for older people and for people pre-existing conditions. Older populations are going to have more problems.

  5. Different amounts of testing and assigning causes of death.

Cherry-picking data can be used to “prove” all kinds of fallacies. Here is one analysis of the recent Sweden bashing:

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Sweden is suffering the same amount of economic damage as the surrounding countries but with more dead people.

They opted for the worst of both worlds.

It’s what this country is also doing right now.

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They have a population that is more resistant. They may well end up with fewer deaths and much less economic damage in the longer run.

I also suspect that they are doing much better economically that critics want to admit:

The Swedish approach has to be maligned to justify the lock-down-forever fallacy.

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Doubtful.

They will suffer the same economic consequences but have more dead people.

That is what we are seeing.

Pointing to growth in the first three months of the year is meaningless when we are talking about the response to the pandemic in July.

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Maybe. But the reality is their death rate and case rate have dropped precipitously without a lockdown. Likewise, early reports were that they did a poor job keeping it out of nursing homes ala NYC. If they had gotten that right, the numbers could have been lower. Sweden simply wasn’t apocalyptic. Still isn’t.

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Compared to its neighbors, Sweden is faring much worse.

All the economic pain with more dead people.

The plan didn’t work like they thought it would.

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  1. That “much worse” is 5K dead. A chunk of which is attributable to nursing home snafu.

  2. Sweden’s plan is long-term, not short-term. They’re expecting that over a year, things will look similar across the board of lockdown vs. non lockdown. We simply wont know if their strategy worked or not until more time has passed.

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Over a year we should see a natural wane in the infection as mitigation efforts improve naturally.

This will also happen in the neighboring countries to Sweden.

The difference is that Sweden will have a lot more dead people than it’s neighbors.

Same outcomes economically but more dead people.

That isn’t a success.