Coronavirus
Coronavirus, COVID-19, is spreading exponentially. So far we have seen news reports from countries where there is an organised and rapid response to outbreaks. But what we are beginning to see now is it's rate of infection in countries without such preparedness. Italy and more worrying Iran. Italy is adopting a very strict strategy now, after being slow to tackle the infection. Whereas Iran is in denial, they are refusing to quarantine suspected cases. They have refused to lock down an important religious site which appears to be the epicentre of their outbreak. Also it has been spreading amongst the political class. There is talk of it's spreading rapidly throughout the Middle East.
What concerns me is that the chaos which will ensue in the Middle East, the virus will find a breeding ground and develop into a more deadly strain. Similarly to the way that Spanish Flu developed during the chaos of the First World War.
Should we be worried, or should we just wait until a vaccination is developed so that we can irradicate it through a vaccination programme?
Or is this the beginning of a deadly pandemic?
What concerns me is that the chaos which will ensue in the Middle East, the virus will find a breeding ground and develop into a more deadly strain. Similarly to the way that Spanish Flu developed during the chaos of the First World War.
Should we be worried, or should we just wait until a vaccination is developed so that we can irradicate it through a vaccination programme?
Or is this the beginning of a deadly pandemic?
Comments (8466)
Its completely bizarre. I'm on Cloud 9. Like being in a movie.
This just from the alcoholism :rofl:
Think I would have thrown him the pack and ran away. What you did was good too though.
In my county there's still only been one confirmed case, and they're in quarantine. Life around me continues as normal. It's a beautiful spring, even though it's raining unusually much for this time of year. All kinds of birds and bunnies and butterflies and flowers everywhere.
I work from home normally, and all of my coworkers have the option to do that, so even if we did have to do social distancing, I thought, that won't affect my line of work.
Then yesterday (Monday) instead of the usual start-of-the-week slam, we only had 20% of the normal workload. Because since so many other people can't go to work, they don't have any money to spend, which means other businesses have less money to pay their employees, so those people get sent home or laid off, and then they're not spending money which means the same process repeats elsewhere, until eventually even my tiny isolated otherwise-unaffected company loses all our customers as the whole economy shuts down.
So at the end of the work day yesterday, the boss cut all our hours (and thus pay) in half indefinitely, as a desperate measure to buy the company a few months until this all blows over.
I've been setting aside a third of my take-home income for a down payment on a house for years and so I've got a big income cushion and a pile of money to fall back on, so if I end up just having to tread water (or sink slowly) for a few weeks or even months to get back to my old life, that's fine with me, and I know I've got things way, way better than a whole lot of other people in that regard. But I'm really terrified that the business might not be able to hold out for that as long as I can, and I might not have the opportunity to get back to my old life at all.
I keep hearing doctors saying that Ibuprofen shouldn't be a problem because it is a mild anti inflammatory and doesn't suppress the immune system. But there has been a scare in France, so as a precaution people are being advised to use paracetamol instead.
That's interesting. The pillar image is creepy!
Yes, I've got conflicting info on that. Reserving judgement for now.
Like I said in the rest of the post that you cherry-picked, if you don't like people telling you what to do, you're a Libertarian and don't even know it. In other words,
Quoting boethius
...spoken like a true Libertarian.
Your "theory" entails not using your eyes to read the rest of someone's post before responding to it. :roll:
It's not completely wacky. Ibuprofen is an anti-inflammatory, and inflammation is an immune response.
WHO Now Officially Recommends to Avoid Taking Ibuprofen For COVID-19 Symptoms
Good thing I managed to find paracetamol yesterday (searched half a dozen shops). All I had is ibuprofen.
Before Corona, BC.
After Corona, AC.
My recommendation is that you call paracetamol either Tylenol or acetaminophen so that someone might know what you're talking about.
You should get financial support from your government and for your company.
Peculiarly I am going to be ok, I have just secured a big contract for a years work. Which will go ahead regardless, unless my clients die, they are retired though. Even without that contract I will be financially secure. My concern is more for some vulnerable parents.
The only people who won't know what I mean by paracetamol are Americans and Americans don't matter.
Then why did God put America in the center of the universe?
In the Nordic countries Sweden looks to have opted for a somewhat different approach than Norway, Denmark and Finland.
It has kept it's schools and borders open (although it has urged against non-essential travel) and is more thinking of that "herd immunity" option. As people are already taking precautions, I think the effect on the actual epidemic may not differ so much, but the economic impact might differ. (From the historical viewpoint, Sweden usually has took a lot more care of it's economy than my country.)
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-03-13/china-japan-korea-coronavirus-reinfection-test-positive?fbclid=IwAR3fylxOVWwo6aUEJsW2L0qygbONET1kufnGyF2AIhWeLUcUfI1eOywSNec
Herd immunity might not be a thing ...
Though I agree with your basic point that herd immunity may not be a thing, the numbers could represents a few scenarios.
A large part of this is explained by false negatives as well as well as a cycle of "intense - less-intense - intense" infection Coronaviurs seem sot exhibit.
So, if recovering means the virus sort of oscillates up and down on the way to zero like a bouncy ball, then you can be recovered, test negative, then the virus flares up a bit and if you're tested then you test positive. In a small amount of patients the "flareup" will develop back into severe disease. This is completely different than overcoming the virus and catching it again.
Even if it is true re-infection, as long as most people develop immunity, then it's not a big problem in terms of her immunity. It's not good of course but not terrible.
What would be terrible is if this is indication that nearly everyone loses immunity over a fairly short period of time, and that this 14% only represent the first part of a Gaussian curve leading to when the majority lose immunity.
What would also be terrible, even if immunity to this strain is usually long lasting, that this is indication that immunity is fragile and that a mutated version of the virus can defeat most people's immunity who got the previous strain, as we see with the flu. It's thought that we are lucky with this virus in that it does not mutate quickly. Unfortunately, mutation is not with respect to time but "total viruses" replicating in people's bodies at anyone time as well as co-infection in a person that has another virus with potentially useful genetic tricks to exchange. A pandemic maximizes both these cause of mutation.
Another reason why the "need to let a few people die for the economy, those planes need to fly like the dickens!" was an erroneous calculation. To make such a risk-benefit calculation (even the goal is just the economy and we are willing to let however many people die to achieve increasing the stock market again) requires information, such as answers to the above, which we currently don't have.
Yes in the UK there is talk of universal income. It will be the easiest way to help people, as it is becoming evident that what ever funding methods that are proposed, many people fall through the net.
It is equally shocking here as the party in government and their base tend to be the privileged and hard working, who look down on the poor and disadvantaged (while actively making them disadvantaged).
True. It's just surprising.
Centre isn't a word.
But "centre" is. Don't let Banno chastise you for getting the use-mention distinction wrong.
"To speed things up, scientists are turning to untested classes of vaccines, and RETHINKING every part of how they are designed, evaluated and manufactured. If the approach works, we will, for the first time, have identified a new disease and developed a vaccine against it while the initial outbreak is still ongoing." (emphasis mine, newscientist dot com)
Other teams are working on understanding how the virus affects the body, so maybe new drugs will be able to stop the life-threatening aspect of the illness. Like help your breathing and stuff
Apparently London is a hotspot. The problem in London is that there are many people who either can't work at home, or can't afford to stop work, as they survive hand to mouth. This morning the tube( metro) was packed full of commuters, even during the social isolation measures. I suspect that the virus is spreading widely across London right now and there are still a lot of people still moving around to keep working.
Also health workers are not being tested, or not being provided with sufficient safety equipment. There are many health workers self isolating for 14 days, with some symptoms, but are not being tested.
Speaking in bold will not make your comments any more intelligent. Please stop it.
intelligible. ok
Then he is scared
Glad you're enjoying it. Who knows? Maybe we'll get another outbreak of the black death next. That would be wild :cheer:
Might be worse than thought. Or it have already mutated.
Another example from last month:
My proposal is not just to let nature take it's course, but instead to invest the trillions we intend to to prop up the economy on ventilators, hospital beds, and better treatment in an effort to drive down the deaths from the infections, as opposed to the futile battle to control the infection rate, which will just further damage all sorts of lives in the process.
I have not seen any data that would have ever led me to the response I see now, but what I instead see is an illness that is mild in the vast (>90%) number of cases and is fatal only among the already very compromised. The cure we've arrived at, to the extent it at all represents a cure, is far worse than the disease.
Makes a change from reading about the pestilential virus threatening civilised life. He's a completely different shape and size. :wink:
That’s my feeling as well. The fear—mostly our collective absence from the economy, but possibly the implementation of a police state—might have worse ramifications than a pandemic. We’ve been through pandemics before, but we have hardly seen a world-wide lockdown of this magnitude. This event is setting the precedent with which future governments will justify seeking more power for them at the expense of less freedoms for us.
It's not just a numbers game though. Our societies operate on certain principles. We accept the deaths caused by car incidents not just because the benefits of allowing personal car use outweigh the deaths in general, but also because driving despite the risk is an individual decision and accidents can often be blamed on individual failures.
The virus is different. There is far less individual control over exposure, especially in the absence of central rules and guidelines. There is also no way to assign individual blame. What we're left with is a situation where government officials are forced to assume responsibility for the life and death of citizens.
You can quarantine yourself if you want. Just like you can stay off the road to protect yourself from a car accident, you can stay in home to protect yourself from coronavirus.
I'm not sure why we're talking about your dental care, but now that we are, do you remember to floss daily? I'm guessing you don't.
I use those little floss on a stick things. I don't like getting my twinkies contaminated. It's not that the government cares about me. They're worried about this, and that's why I'ma get that money.
Sure. But my employer would hardly let me, would they? If some children go to school, and others do not, how would classes be handled?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41421-020-0156-0
Thank goodness for the internet and this forum, and the gardening I can do. A good side is there is much less traffic and I can enjoy driving again. :grin: I don't worry about walking through stores because so few people are in them. It is almost like I have the whole world to myself. :lol:
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing-source-data
The UK has been doing a deal of testing, and it looks therefore as though there are not huge numbers of undetected cases. So the numbers here are probably fairly reliable:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
However, it is early days. The 1% serious or critical figure looks fairly reassuring until you look at the death to recovery ratio. 2 deaths for every recovery. One hopes the latter ratio will improve as mild cases are declared recovered, but the 1% is likely to increase as some of the new cases deteriorate.
If the 1% increases to 15%, though, then I fear there will be almost no treatment for most of that 7.9 million and very many will die.
Quoting Hanover Have you been looking at all?
The US doesn't have any decent data, but look at the UK data and think on. (Hint. 15% of 80% of the US population is about 39 million)
The simple fact is that now in the 21st Century we simply don't tolerate vast amounts of people to die in epidemics. We take preventive steps even if there is just the possibility of vast amounts of people to die. That's it. Earlier we tolerated that people die from epidemic diseases. And you be the judge what is "vast amounts of people".
This "safety-culture" is quite universal and is present everywhere, it's not only that technology and science has improved, but also our attitudes have changed.
As I've said, if we could forecast earthquakes, we wouldn't tolerate people dying in earthquakes. Same thing. Polticians would have to do the utmost to save people from earthquakes. Even if you Hanover and NOS4A2 wouldn't want to leave your home and would be just fine to face the incoming earthquake estimated being 8 on the richter scale, many people would leave and not call it an "infraction of their rights".
Or just think about the response to 9/11. All the increased security and everything. Assume what would have happened if things would have been left totally the same, if Americans would have truly thought that "Terrorist attacks are unfortunate, but limiting personal freedoms would be worse". They didn't do that. And things would have been as before starting from security at domestic flights being a joke (that they were)? Well, just a few more strikes would have been successful and perhaps only some hundreds more of Americans would have died. So what's the big deal there?
Disregarding your beef with NOS4A2, do you not see hope in this possible treatment option?
"Mild" cases include having holes punched in your lungs and permanently reduced capacity. You go out and go viral if you want. I like my organs just the way they are. Anyway, now that even Republicans have embraced socialism, the "liberty" argument has lost. You're pissing into the wind.
It's not just about the 1-3% who die from the disease. There are those who don't die but require hospitalization or other medical treatment. It's an additional burden on the health service that could lead to even more deaths (of other injuries and illnesses). Not to mention the financial burden on those who do require medical help (copayments, incomplete coverage, inability to work, etc.)
Take your racism and shove it. Racists get banned. Final warning.
Once the virus appeared in humans, it was destined to become global.
You think Chinese is a race? That’s racist. Either way, we should do our best to counteract the narrative of the CCP.
I'm not a fan of the CCP either. But it's not our job to get involved in a propaganda war between them and the US. Besides which, people of Chinese ethnicity (or of any of the multiple ethnicities in China to be more accurate) should not be stigmatized because we don't like their government.
The CCP is also saying the use of such terms is racist. We should be careful not to promote their propaganda in order to quell our own. But I will stick to the accepted terms.
Because a bad guy says A doesn't make A wrong. Genetic fallacy.
Doesn’t make them right either. But I’ll drop it nonetheless.
Right, move on.
Yeah, those sick old people had it coming - good riddance!
(I hear this "point" surprisingly often from people who argue that the threat has been blown out of proportion.)
Italy had 475 deaths yesterday. With population of 60.5 million and annual mortality rate of 10.2 per 1000, that's 25% increase of mortality rate (even if we allow that, say, 10% of those who died from coronavirus would have died from other causes within the same period).
It should recover, unless like a dying COVID-19 patient, it has an underlying disease.
They're not the bad guys with respect to this pandemic.
Latest I've heard. In the Netherlands they're testing an existing vaccin (I forgot which one) for a different drug that tends to put people's immune system into hyperdrive, possibly allowing them to resist the disease themselves.
Jesus. That’s greater than China’s reported death toll.
Yes, just surpassed Chinese total.
Other than it being started there and the chinese government subsequently covering it up.
I hypothesized a while ago that DNP (dinitrophenol) could make cancer cells self-destruct through accelerated metabolic pathways and energy being expended by heat production within the mitochondria.
My assumption here is that if caught earlier in the prodromal phase of the disease, then one can hypothetically "flush out" the diseased cells.
Enhance the immune system through some natural flavenoids or other drugs, and it just may be possible to prevent the lethality of the virus.
Without taking sides in the debate, if anyone wants to go after the Chinese government, feel free. One of their officials trying to pin the whole thing on some bizarre American plot was disgusting and xenophobic. But the last thing we should allow this situation to do is to turn [I]people[/i] against each other on the basis of race or nationality. Fuck that.
Agreed.
However, the chinese Wild-Animal Industry, wet markets and government all need to be shut down.
It's dropping, not rising I think ...
You mistake (just in general):
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/chinese-authorities-gagged-laboratories-in-december-over-coronavirus-sars-connection/?fbclid=IwAR3sP-2t9TPyzzGd0kKNKhpm6sua6HQRVrDN-WKZKiSdT11EK13j3-Y-j48
Sounds like you're blaming the locals
Why is he doing this?
I would like to have access to a copy of your OP so I can pass it on,
He’s angry the CCP was blaming the American military for the pandemic.
Forwarded it before the thought police ruined it.
:halo:
It plays well into his supporters xenophobia, seriously.
Yes, it's divide and rule. Blame someone else and then claim the credit for calling them out. Whenever the shit hits the fan, it's all their fault, I'm the good guy. And then when there's good news I did it, such a stable genius.
We are going to have plenty of time to point fingers, LATER.
You are not on the same page as humanity if you cannot look past our political differences at a crisis moment like this. Enough of the bs and I include our President in that group of "us".
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/china-trolling-world-and-avoiding-blame/608332/?fbclid=IwAR0dGoZloHXNYw0D6ETYvl1yzElagZUcR9QsbMl0oo-yWoGvmiKhNIyScgY
No new infections. Suuuuuuure.
Go buy some Plaquenil from your local pharmacy and halt any progression of the disease.
Be sure to use one of those coupons, like GoodRX.com has...
Regards.
:mask:
:rofl:
:rofl:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext
You don't seem to understand how Chinese internal politics works. It sat on information while it was still an internal issue that wasn't necessarily going to become an international issue. That's from beginning until end of December. At which time there were 40 confirmed infected (41 as of January 2). They shared the genetic code then, which is early (go ask a virologist whether it's normal to do after only 40 confirmed cases).
So no, they did not troll the rest of the world. It's just kindergarten politics to blame the Chinese as a distraction of how shittily the US administration.
It's also funny to see that when it wasn't an issue in the US, right wingers were taking issue with the Chinese lock down and now they didn't do enough. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't. And not a week ago the problem was Europe!
Meanwhile, I think people here have close to zero understanding of virology, epidemiology or the skills and knowledge necessary to begin to manage health issues at these scales so let's all point fingers to the Chinese, because really that's all you can do. Which is probably why Trump does it too.The Chinese are currently helping more to minimise the effects than any other country because the rest that have any money to spare are almost all in lock down.
I dont think folk here are uncalm. Or do you mean they are exaggerating?
In the UK, London is the hotspot, the Prime minister has instructed Londoners to carry out the required social distancing and self isolating when they have symptoms. But he has not closed all cafes, restaurants, pubs, metro lines etc, or banned people mingling in the streets. But many people are just ignoring the instructions and carrying on as normal. It is clear that the virus is spreading freely around the city.
There are still many who think that the government is allowing the virus to spread, so that the people will develop heard immunity. But this is folly, as it will mean that a large proportion of Londoners will become infected at the same time over the next few weeks. Resulting in a chaotic mess.
Watch this space.
That is everybody's strategy. We just want it to spread in slow motion.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/coronavirus-wuhan-doctor-ai-fen-speaks-out-against-authorities
"On 21 January, the day after Chinese officials finally confirmed there was human to human transmission of the virus, the number of sick residents coming to the emergency room had already reached 1,523 in a day – three times the normal volume."
Edit: to clarify, the Chinese issued internal warnings on 2 January. They shared the sequence on 12 January.
I am already thinking of a cartoon in which Cummings is a corona virus.
Maybe the NHS is ready to kick ass.
:grimace:
It’s not just politics. We can just let it happen or we can fight back. I prefer the latter.
As it is with the typical cronyism, companies with more than 500 employees are excluded from the paid leave mandate, for whatever reason. Companies with fewer than 50 are also exempt if to do so jeopardizes their business.
And you know that how?
What are you doing to “fight back”?
Quoting Janus Housing is most people’s biggest expense and there isn’t suddenly a dearth of that. People can keep living where they are, if only they are allowed to do so.
Debt servicing is the next big expense (student loans, car loans, mortgages, etc), and once more, money isn’t suddenly disappearing. People can just keep the money that they have, if they’re allowed to.
Food is always produced in huge surpluses, and we have vast stores of it set aside for emergencies, so people can eat that, if they’re allowed to.
Clothes aren’t suddenly disappearing. Cars aren’t suddenly disappearing. Phones aren’t suddenly disappearing.
Payment of money is usually the condition for which people are allowed access to things. Money has suddenly stopped flowing because work is the usual condition for getting access to money and people aren’t allowed to work anymore. So we could solve the whole financial crisis just by forcing money to flow from where it is concentrated to where it is lacking, from where it will flow back into concentrations again. Like CPR for the economy.
For a start I’m not going to run defence for the CCP.
I say that because they allowed massive companies to be exempt from mandated sick leave.
You've got 4,500 new cases of covid in the US just today. Maybe put your energies into thinking about how to deal with that. Now's not really the time for starting fights with countries that may be able to help you.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
We agree on something. :scream:
You fight by not defending the CCP. Yup, sounds about right.
I’m just placing blame where it is due. I see no problem with that.
According to this report:
People are dying because of this.
Americans spell is "defense" you troll.
Oh, here we go.
You realize Trump did the same right? He consistently downplayed the threat until the recent stockmarket crash.
Quoting NOS4A2
Trump did the same as the CCP? That’s a massive lie.
:yawn: He didn't literally do the same as the CCP. In terms of what matters in the substance of your criticism, he did though.
Feck off, this thread's about Coronovirus, not Trump...
Good call, I'm done on this anyway.
Oh, he figuratively did the same. Utter nonsense.
I like this better anyway.
According to them chloroquine is the answer.
Oh, I brought up Trump. Hilarious.
Sorry, I'm with the adults in the room.
I doubt it's that simple. But it's worth looking into.
A non-peer reviewed trial with a tiny sample isn't going to cut it except as a spur for further studies. Ray of hope though.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN2161QQ
Promising results.
Banks in Ireland have agreed to give a three month mortgage holiday and evictions for non-payment of rent have been banned. Do that, U.S.
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/financial-services/coronavirus-banks-agree-mortgage-breaks-and-repossession-deferrals-1.4205750
https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2020/0319/1124168-evictions-ban-coronavirus/
I put all my hope in a scientific solution, not in a policy one. My trust isn't in some politician of any party of any country to figure out how to fix this.
I don't think you understood the problem regarding flattening the curve.
I'm not sure if you're saying "so what" as in "whatever, no big deal", or if you're asking me what should be done to help in those cases. Your punctuation suggests it's not the former, but I literally already answered the latter at the end of the very post you're responding to:
Quoting Pfhorrest
The government should just give people money so that they can keep paying for access to the plentiful resources we already have, through the usual means that are already in place; and then later take money from people in proportion to how much they have (i.e. tax the rich) to cover that expenditure, once this crisis is over.
The US is suspending HUD foreclosures and evictions for at least 60 days.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/18/hud-suspends-foreclosures-evictions-coronavirus-135783
You do realize that "the government" can only "give" the money to people that it takes from the people in the first place, or do you not? This seems a problem with people like e.g. Bernie voters.... they seem to think that "the government" sits on a giant pot of gold can make every "free" for everyone, without any other effects on the country.
Not true. It is correct that Trumps original response was bad PR; he was too overly optimistic, as is his natural reflex. But he corrected that pretty quickly. The stock market would have gone down anyway, as it was looking for a correction.
You might want to consider taking your TDS tunnel vision glasses off sometimes; not everything bad in the world is the fault of the orange monster.
Other voters think that tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, building a multi-billion dollar wall, driving up the deficit, blah blah... won’t have any effects???
I have seen you have feeing on party-ine propaganda talking points. But interesting that you mention the "deficit" in the same breath while demanding that the government spends money. Cognitive dissonance?
Apparently you can’t read to the end of a sentence, because I already addressed this later in the same sentence you quoted only the beginning of.
No they don't. They are well aware that the money comes from taxation. They want to fund this by increasing the tax on businesses and the wealthy (e.g. by reverting Trump's $1.5 trillion tax cut) and cutting spending elsewhere.
Well, depends on who "they" are. With a lot of that crowd, I do have the feeling they really do not understand that the government does not have a magical pot of gold.
Quoting Michael
Yeah, OK, I know the party political slogans. The reality is of course more complicated, but that is not really a topic for the Corona thread.
Well, technically they do (as that's how there is a currency at all).
The government can create all the money we need: an explanation
Although I believe abusing this leads to inflation.
It'd perhaps be more accurate to say that the a society could, if necessary, suspend the use of markets and money to direct economic output and instead pour all output directly into a problem.
Markets are useful because they are low-maintenance cybernetic systems that allow a relatively high amount of individual freedom. Money is useful because it makes markets even better at what they do. But we don't need to rely on either to solve a problem.
Of course, but since I assume that you are not a complete idiot (like the infinite pot-of-money crowd), you of course know that that simply means inflation, i.e. taxation of everybody. So why bring this up?
Begone climate-change-denying Trump sycophant. You are not a serious contributor here.
This is explained by the fact that a lot of people have saving goals. With interests too low, they will set aside more money to still reach those goals.
I only mentioned Trump/Republican policies. Projection?
We should have done that during the housing crisis when bad banking regulations made victims of hard-working citizens. :rage:
I have hope that we will come out of this pandemic a better nation. We might be interring a new age that will better than our past.
:confused:
What we'll learn is finally is to work from home and have net conferences. Talk about a truly collective learning experience.
Just think how many elementary and lower secondary school teachers everywhere have suddenly had to start using the internet to get to their pupils. For higher level education it isn't a great change, for lower levels it is. I have two children with one being a first grader and another a 6th grader and both are now living this eternal Sunday. Both of their class teachers were struggling to get the school work into net, but managed in couple of days to make it work. The frantic improvisation and their joy when getting their pupils online and working makes me smile. Yep, obviously no plans were made for this kind of event by the education system here, hence multitude of approaches by individual schools (which may be actually a good thing). Also, in country where home schooling is very rare, now something new.
The corona-virus is likely the best thing every to happen to the internet companies and service providers. It's so good for them that likely someone will come up with a conspiracy theory that Microsoft and Google were behind the outbreak in China. After all, even after some time has gone, the officials will still say "Use precaution" and "stay at home if you can". So how about that work that you can do from home? Any tin foil hats going with that one?
I’m impressed that many governments are imposing these restrictions with regret, but for an indefinite amount of time authoritarianism is the new normal.
I would love to agree with you, but I have some concerns.
On-line school is not working at all for my family. Not all families value education. Not all families understand the importance of self-discipline and setting goals. Plenty of people are totally reactionary and everything revolves around their feelings. These folks can not be the parents children need in today's world. Our children need to be schools where there is a chance of a teacher and peers making a difference. Learning is very much about relationships, not just available facts presented in the right order. To clarify, I am concerned children will be doing as they please at the moment and that will not be studying, and their parents will not be able to get them to study. May parents don't even understand why all that school is necessary any way.
Working at home bites if the children are there. And again working is very much about relationships. I am afraid our technological society lacks awareness of how important our relationships are to being human and everything we do.
Suppose it works? Will he not be a great savior? Will all the Trump naysayers do an about face?
Well, this is the perfect time when people can see that. And as I said, it's this obligatory introduction to home schooling. That needs a lot of effort from the parents.
After this 'ordeal' nobody can hype the benefits of working from home as earlier as nearly everybody has now experienced this. They will see the pros and cons and what is possible and what isn't. Above all, soon people will realize what this kind of shutdown means when 80% of the GDP of the US is made of the service sector and that the vast majority of employment is in the service sector. Now, a vast portion of it is simply shut down.
You are looking at an economic depression likely worse than during the last financial crisis.
Classy.
Testing any kind of treatment takes time. Patients have to be enrolled and data has to be collected. The reason we do it that way is that if the drug turns out to kill more people than it helps, we'll know that by exposing a small number of patients to it instead of the whole damn population. The government can fast-track FDA approval. It can't fast-track a study.
If it turns out that this is a wonder drug for this particular ailment, great. Wonderful. But right now, we need to be preparing for a wave of sick people. We'll be treating them according to standards already established so that we first do no harm and all that shit.
He called the State Department the Deep State Department.
If his decision is based on solid evidence and advice from the experts then sure. If it's just a "hunch based upon some anecdotal information" and he got lucky then no. That's a dangerous way to respond to a pandemic even if it does pay off this one time.
Is that a sociological question? If so, I'd say no. Rejection of Trump isn't based primarily on single decisions. As you have already analysed, it's easy to see this as a risky gamble that, given your scenario, just happened to work.
Might easily be enough to win the election though.
No, because if it doesn't work, he'll say he thought it was a bunch of baloney the whole time and Nobrainnolife and NOS will tell you it's FAKE NEWS! if you say otherwise.
But I hope it does work, obviously, and who cares if Trump tries to take the credit.
I just signed up to a new gym half an hour ago cause they said they were still open. :confused:
UK are slow learners.
Both my gyms closed. The guy said he'd open up on Saturday mornings for me and another guy for private training. I've been taking kick boxing lessons so that I can fight off the zombies.
It might be politically risky, but the drug is fairly safe.
How's it dangerous? It was either nothing or the malaria drug.
Virus drug touted by President Trump, Elon Musk can kill with just two gram dose
I have no idea how safe it is, or what the opportunity costs of attempting this treatment might be. And of course if subsequent information makes this seem like a well informed bold decision, instead of a gamble, it'll be perceived differently and convince more people.
But just success will not be enough to convince a lot of "naysayers".
The questioning from the reporter related to using the malaria drug as a treatment, and he asked "Is it possible that your impulse to put a positive spin on things may be giving Americans a false sense of hope." This is a worldview distinction you don't appreciate. There is no such thing as false hope. There's this pervasive idea that pessimism is of some value, as if it's related to truth, and even worse that it doesn't create reality. I'm not suggesting that you should jump off a ledge if you're optimistic enough to think you'll fly, but I am saying that as long as Trump continues to ask Americans to take all reasonable precautions (which he has been), then one ought be optimistic.
Chloroquine isn't actually a viral drug as the article represents, but it's an anti-malaria drug. Regardless, the article is providing some fairly irrelevant toxicity data, suggesting the drug is unsafe. A gallon of vodka will kill a horse, which means neither you nor your horse should drink that much vodka.
The recommended dose of chloroquine for an adult is a single 500 mg dose per week. If someone wants to gulp down 2 grams (400% the recommended dose) and see what happens, I'm wondering why. I also wonder why they printed that article other than to suggest the drug is dangerous when it isn't.
Keep your day job, man.
Apparently, it was originally China's idea. See @Relativist's post above.
"China, where the deadly pathogen first emerged in December, recommended the decades-old malaria drug chloroquine to treat infected patients in guidelines issued in February after seeing encouraging results in clinical trials. But within days, it cautioned doctors and health officials about the drug’s lethal side effects and rolled back its usage."
Trump is a clueless child and should probably just shut up and leave this to the adults.
Who cares? I was asking if Trump pushes this through based upon his limited information would you rethink your disgust of Trump. I mean if this works, he wins in my book and people will live who otherwise wouldn't have.
I'll keep my day job, but first point me to the website that indicates that hydroxychloroquine is a corticosteroid so I'll know why I need to worry about the side effects of them.
Trump has a credibility problem. On Feb 28, he labeled the coronavirus the "Democrat's new hoax", while this week he said, "“I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic … I’ve always viewed it as very serious.”
There is a chance chloroquine will help, but the evidence for its efficacy is largely anecdotal. It's stupid to place our hopes in this one thing - consider the impact if it doesn't pan out. Earlier this week he made some stupid comments about a vaccine being available in a matter of months, only to be immediately contradicted by Antony Fauci. If Trump's going to continue with his idiocy, we'd all be better off if he'd stay in the background.
Real hope can be delivered by outlining how the government is staying ahead of the problem. This includes tracking critical supplies (ventilators, masks, gloves, hospital beds, medical staff...) and what's being done to address production and distribution problems. Projections on infection rates, hospitalization rates, and even death rates should be tracked and shared - as these reflect the demand side of the problem. Set benchmarks and track progress. Adjust response as necessary. These all show that things are under control, which is so much better than just lying and claiming things are under control as Trump had been doing.
A drug that's helpful in one situation can be deadly in another, so you don't know if this drug is helpful or harmful in the case of coronavirus. None of us do.
I get what you're saying, but it's not just about the result, it's about the risk. Storytime: I live on a hill and I don't know if the brakes work in my car, but it's raining and my wife at the bus stop at the bottom the hill calls me to pick her up. I jump in the car and rush down the hill to get her. Luckily the brakes do work and I don't have an accident. Is what I did OK because there were no ill consequences? No, because I didn't have sufficient information to take that risk. I should have checked the brakes first or let her walk and get wet. What I did was dumb regardless of the result. I don't know in this case what information Trump is basing this on. If it's expert advice and it works, sure, he deserves credit for expediting it. If it's just a hunch and potentially dangerous then I should not be messing with your wife in the rain. Ah, or whatever.
I'm sure he would be proclaimed as a great savior by his constituency. That's the script they read from.
But, of course, Trump's hunches have no more epistemic value than tea-leaf reading. That's a lesson being learnt by those who bought stocks on the hunch that coronavirus was "totally under control".
This is a philosophy forum. Is accidental true belief praiseworthy? Should Trump proclaim certainty about things that he knows nothing about?
Nice crosspost. :up:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/20/trump-coronavirus-nationwide-lockdown-139330
Prepare for a nationwide lockdown.
[I]"What do you say to Americans who are scared though? I guess, nearly 200 dead, 14,000 who are sick, millions, as you witnessed, who are scared right now," Alexander asked. "What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now who are scared?"
“I say that you’re a terrible reporter,” Trump said. “That’s what I say. I think that’s a very nasty question. The American people are looking for answers and they’re looking for hope, and you’re doing sensationalism," Trump said.[/i] (Source)
I think the point is well made that it makes sense to lock down those areas where it's warranted. Just because it makes sense in New York, doesn't mean it makes sense in Montana. It's like asking whether Europe should go into lockdown. It sort of depends where.
I know. I was just having fun.
Story time: The headlight on my car doesn't work and there are no replacements, so I rig up an old lightbulb to the front of my car to see if it works. It doesn't. I'm back to where I was and your wife doesn't have tire marks across her face and there's no other calamity.
That is to say, you've sort of made up the danger to the drug just like you accuse Trump of making up the effectiveness of it.
? But the drug is potentially dangerous.
"China, where the deadly pathogen first emerged in December, recommended the decades-old malaria drug chloroquine to treat infected patients in guidelines issued in February after seeing encouraging results in clinical trials. But within days, it cautioned doctors and health officials about the drug’s lethal side effects and rolled back its usage."
I didn't make that up. Whether or not it could also be effective is yet to be established. Let's pursue the line, but carefully. As Frank pointed out:
Quoting frank
In the same sense it's praiseworthy when you play the $1 lottery and win $1,000,000 It's the same $1m whether you worked your ass off your whole life or whether you got lucky. Worst case you lost a $1.
Shows that he must be cracking under the pressure and what a terrible leader he is. Pence answered the same softball question by the same reporter in a normal reassuring way.
Being killed by the lethal side-effects of a drug untested in a particular infection context is not like losing a dollar.
In my extensive studies of this drug, dating well back to 3, maybe 4 hours ago, I note there are actually two types of this drug. You have the older chloroquine which can have some nasty side effects, and then you have its less angry cousin hydroxychloroquine. As you will note from this article, that drug is not dangerous, but is as safe as a cup of hot cocoa on a blustery winter day: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41421-020-0156-0
You've obviously never lost a dollar.
I did. I just bet @Michael you'd say something smart on this thread. Must have been the Guinness. :groan:
Very suspicious. Why are you guys dealing in American currency?
Hey, if NOS is an American, we are too. :halo: :party:
Because it's worthless so we don't mind losing it.
Any bets on whether Trump will start calling chloroquine The Chinese Cure?
Like just where in Europe there isn't a lockdown in one form or another? Sweden and the UK?
Lockdown is starting to be curfew. Bavaria has already implemented this. Whole of Germany might be following...
In fact similar rules are already here...without police yet giving huge fines. So I don't know what the really differences are.
(Schools out! A pupil celebrating that gymnasium is over in Finland. Perhaps interested in studying medicine in the university?)
I think the quaranteening movement actually can stop the virus from spreading. If all people who have got it are quaranteened for three weeks, the virus will die in them. Some will die with the virus, but the virus in the survivors also will die.
If some of the carriers pass it on, and quaranteening continues, in the next generation of virus infections there will be fewer people infected.
And in the next, even fewer.
Depending on how stringently we do the quaranteening, and the contact avoidance, thus the spread avoidance, the stoppage of the spread and the killling of all viruses will be inversely proportional in time and in number of generations with the stringency and success of quaranteening
Better quaranteening = fewer generations of infections, shorter diesease time before the virus dies out (becomes extinct.)
This has difficulties, too. This presumes no reinfection is possible. But the COVID-19 virus is mutating quickly. If the mutants are impervious to the antibodies in the previously infected surviving people, the thing can go on forever.
Also, will it only be those who simply cannot pay their mortgage or rent who are exempt from payments?
I'm not saying governments won't be able to handle this; but I'm not confident that they will either. Of course, I realize it's always better to maintain an optimistic outlook... :wink:
So, my point is; remain open to the possibility that this won't end well, and that the economy will not be able to recover, and resume business as usual. Of course if business as usual is not reinstated, then that will surely be best for the planet, if not for our comfortable lifetsyles.
not necessarily... the shortage of goods happens because there is no production, and no salaries, no taxes... the bail-out will enable to sustain a modicum level of trade (commercial) economy (maybe... big maybe), but the goods/moneysupply ratio may actually increase, not decline. Which produces deflation.
...and best for business. Provided there will be a Marshall-plan type bail out at the end of it.
Phoenix economy... from its own ashes it gets reborn.
The wall just got higher.
Does this work for you?
Lol. OK.
Quoting god must be atheist
Best for business how? Apparently you believe in unlimited resources...
Did I contradict that? Duhhh.
Quoting Janus
The same way that the aftermath of WWII made the world ten times richer over every ten years.
READ MY POST. Marshall plan. That is the operative part of it.
Explanation:
In WWII almost all machinery in Germany got bombed out or were otherwise destroyed.
The Marshall plan pumped money into Germany to rebuild the economy.
All new machinery was bought and installed... much better than the pre-war ones.
Production levels doubled many times over in the first decade in West Germany.
it became the economic powerhouse of Europe; the production powerhouse; and the envy of all other nations.
The other nations were actually pissed off, having witnessed the reflowering of German life; "Who lost the war, dammit?" People of other nations were saying.
---------------
Without the Marshall plan Germany would have needed hundreds of economic years to rebuild itself to its earlier levels of production.
That was a time of burgeoning resources; this is a time of diminishing resources and vastly greater population.
Here is a link to a site that may help you to educate yourself a little:
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2020/03/11/it-is-easy-to-overdo-covid-19-quarantines/#more-44860
What did you mean by this then?:
Quoting god must be atheist
If there is anything I can do I will, but my family is in danger and I am old and there are children involved. My daughter is a drug and alcohol rehab worker working with an at-risk population. My granddaughter with two children can not see her children because she works with the homeless and has been exposed. She has taken steps to give authority to a friend who cares for her children now and to have custody of them if she dies. We know hard times and suffering. I am working hard to keep my spirits up. There are no fathers to help with the children. Just the male friend who is being a superhero with his low income and very small apartment. The children like him very much, so we may get through okay, but I am scared. Not for my life but the people in my family and our future.
Cracking? It's his normal behavior:
[Url=https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/trump-playbook-coronavirus/607342/?utm_source=feed]
The Atlantic: Trump’s Playbook Is Terribly Ill-Suited to a Pandemic[/url]:
[I]The new pandemic is a challenge for which his playbook seems uniquely unsuited.
The Trump crisis playbook to date has involved bullying both political allies, to keep them in line, and potential opponents, to prevent them from talking. It has involved lying. It has involved the deflection of attention onto other matters. It has involved attacking the attackers, spinning conspiracy theories about and spawning investigations of the investigators.
Trump and this pandemic are a lesson in tyranny. Obama put in place departments to handle a pandemic when Eboli was threatening everyone. Trump undid most of what Obama put in place. Trump has also removed everyone from office who did not kiss his ass, and put in their place people willing to kiss his ass if they have the merit to do the job or not. Now even if one of them has good judgment, they are all afraid to say anything to him that he might not like. The problem was the same for China when Chairman Mao was in power and people starved to death because of his ignorance and bad rule.
We have forgotten what science has to do with democracy, good moral judgment, and rule by reason. Christians tend to hold a different world view- dependent not on science and many minds working on resolving problems, but on pleasing God and this God, with the prayers of the people, making it possible for the ruler to work miracles. This has been so since the beginning of civilizations. Faith in the pharaoh, the king, the president, or whatever title you want to give the promised leader of the people. Hopefully, this unfortunate reality will be changed by what we are experiencing today.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Nice advice but many people are on the front line of this war, and they can not put themselves first. They are risking their lives for everyone they care for. I hope we become very aware of that and find some way to acknowledge them.
Very true.
Unfortunately, so far the fruits of Trump's gambling instincts are an entrenched pandemic and a stock market crash. Let's hope his luck changes.
However that's only going to happen if he checks his ego and starts listening to people who do know something about pandemics and economics before millions of people die. And that applies to the leaders of every other country as well.
Refer to chart 2 (showing the exponential case explosion) to see the difference that a week of dithering around makes.
Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance - What the Next 18 Months Can Look Like, if Leaders Buy Us Time
You are right about that. I can't argue. The guns and other weaponry was abandoned; full of precious panzer material, steel. Some people all over the world, collected rusted-out old tanks and stuff, and became millionaires when the time came to hunger resources. Coal was used in abundance. Manpower was cheap. The neocolinialist period was at its height. The colonies could be pumped for sugar, rubber, whatever.
And these are only the industrial resources. There were useless resources, as well, lost for Industry: such as gold and diamond mines, a bourgeouning poetry industry, lots of prostitutes in Europe ready for the American soliders, and the budding quantum mechanics industry; the last stalwarts of famous philosophers were in abundance, such as Sartre, Szart-e, Camus, Bertrand Russell, etc. etc. Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale, Bridgitte Bardot, Gina Lollobrigida, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Dyck Van Dyke, for the entertainment industry. The values industry has not swollen, however, very interestingly: the Ku Klux Klan was weakening, there were never more than one popes, and the Dalai Llama was not a household word yet.
This is a ratio. It can increase in value if the numerator (the top part) increases faster, than the denominator (the bottom part).
You were worried that there may be inflation, by the gov giving out free money. But if the FEW people who remain in production produce MORE goods than the equal number of poeple produced in the old (pre Covid times) then the ratio may increase. That may not be even overset by the increase in money supply. Why? Because the quaranteen guarantees a lot of good are not consumed. So there will be a surplus of some goods. Toilet paper is not one of them; but there is more toilet paper being manufactured per person who makes them, than pre-covioid times.
All in all it costed me with shipping from China via DHL, 49 USD for 10g.
I dunno. In actuality, it could go either way. Hard to say now.
If the united states has 300 million people; and it takes 28 days to infect half of the population of the united states; then if the trend does not change, how many more days would it take to infect the entire USA?
Official prediction by my think tank: In a few hours Trump will declare Hydroxychloriquine an extremely dangerous and useless substance, and will ban its importation from overseas.
There will be movies made of the the smuggling. Two movies, to be exact. One will be titled "The French Protocol", the other, "The Chinese Protocol". They will be basically just remakes of the "French Connection" and of the "Chinese Connection".
There will be a movie made of the new Democratic runner, just entering the race, who is of Asian origin, and the movie will be titled "The Manchurian Candidate."
It's available via prescription also. But, Alibaba is the go to place for your anticorona infection treatments in bulk.
What's 49 USD for some peace of mind?
The psychopathic chiefs would want it to cost 5 million; but, it's an old drug also known as Plaquenil, available at CVS, Costco, and elsewhere.
Nah. Man. The Chinese have higher ethical standards than US, and the online labs retailing on Alibaba with a trade assurance policy all have a solid and sound reputation.
Use a coupon code website like goodRx.com if you want it cheap.
That is a pretty clever quip. If you could look outside your TDS bubble, you would agree with that.
You mean the CCP? The one that jailed people for months for talking about Corona? Seriously???
Modify Search
Get Price Alerts
KROGER PHARMACY See more KROGER PHARMACY locations near me
4747 Research Forest Dr
The Woodlands, TX 77381
(281) 298-6165
9am - 6pm
As low as...
$19.80
Add to My Saved Search
Move to Medicine Chest Add to Med Chest
Get Coupon
HEB PHARMACY See more HEB PHARMACY locations near me
10777 Kuykendahl Rd
The Woodlands, TX 77382
(281) 292-8026
9am - 6pm
As low as...
$29.99
Add to My Saved Search
Move to Medicine Chest Add to Med Chest
Get Coupon
WALMART PHARMACY See more WALMART PHARMACY locations near me
25800 Kuykendahl Rd
Tomball, TX 77375
(832) 761-8483
9am - 7pm
As low as...
$40.39
Note: savings card is not valid for opioid medications at Walmart
Add to My Saved Search
Move to Medicine Chest Add to Med Chest
Get Coupon
Tired of clipping coupons? Keep your savings in your pocket with your ScriptSave WellRx prescription discount card.
No sign up required
Get Your Savings Card
WALGREENS See more WALGREENS locations near me
4585 Research Forest Dr
The Woodlands, TX 77381
(281) 465-0548
9am - 6pm
As low as...
$58.07
Add to My Saved Search
Move to Medicine Chest Add to Med Chest
Get Coupon
CVS PHARMACY See more CVS PHARMACY locations near me
4775 W Panther Creek Dr Ste A100
The Woodlands, TX 77381
(281) 363-9174
9am - 6pm
As low as...
$72.84
---------------------
These are the prices for the French Protocol for one person.
If you have more than two people in your household, @Shawn, and fewer than 9, then you made a good purchase.
@Noobernolife, you are mixing up ethics with human rights again. Granted, they have to do something with each other.
If you have membership with Ralph's, it comes out to be something like 14 USD for 90 tablets @ 200mg.
Human rights are part of ethics. What are you talking about?
Yes hopefully this is true, but it's not that simple because the virus might go into out of the way parts of the body of some people and become dormant and then emerge again later on.
But some suspect it will be even lower, possibly lower than seasonal flu. Dr. John P. A. Ioannidis recently wrote:
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/
What a complete idiot; can't believe this guy is correlated with the word "statistics". That's academia for you.
His reasoning is completely preposterous.
After explaining why sampling bias creates large uncertainties, which is true, that without good estimates of the infection fatality rate, no optimum strategy can be constructed. True. An honest intellectual would have pointed out why it was so critical to contain as effectively as possible during the initial outbreak to buy time to get good information to make good decisions.
But, either due to being a dishonest intellectual or then just a complete idiot, he does not want to inform his readers that people in charge completely dropped the ball during the initial phase where containment was still possible to either contain or at least significantly slow.
He really, really wants to criticize people who don't have an optimistic reading of the numbers, which he himself goes to some length to explain that there's not enough information to get a good estimate on way or another -- but insists on emphasizing only a rosy reading.
This leads up to his key premise which is as follows:
Quoting John Ioannidis
From this premise the reasonable conclusion is that sort of random testing should be carried out! so that it goes from being information we don't have to information we have. That should then be the end of his reasoning line: if we want better decisions we need better data which will require more testing capability as well as randomized testing. Another example of things that can't be done early on when testing is outsourced to a crony who then does a crappy job.
Instead of informing his readers that the Trump administration does have the power to do this, and therefore should do it, he instead criticizes people for "preparing for the worst scenario".
Quoting John Ioannidis
Is his next sentence. What the hell is this? Most measures of social distancing are uncontroversial in that they work.
Epidemiologists, which this dufous apparently is, all agree social distancing measures work at reducing transmission rates. "Shelter in place" obviously works at reducing infection rates.
By focusing on one edge case of schools, where there is room for some debate, doesn't cast shade on all the other extreme measures of self-isolation and large scale quarantines. This is just completely dishonest argumentation to imply all social distancing measures have the same uncertainty as school closings; however, a numerical model recently leaked does show school closing as being effective, so, in order to keep "the uncertainty is the same" perspective he would need to at least provide a numerical model showing school closings are counter productive, which he doesn't because he's lazy and stupid.
Quoting John Ioannidis
Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe.
This is simply wishful thinking analysis.
The expression "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst" he basically wants to change to "Hope for the best, and also prepare the best".
It's completely reasonable to prepare for a worst case scenario if the Trump administration doesn't carry out the randomized testing that the author wants. That's the reasonable conclusions to the "room for doubt" that he brings up: "The administration is completely incompetent, the infection rate is out of control and not tracked correctly, we don't know what will happen, policy reactions will not be optimum leading to high second order risks in terms of economic and social disruption fallout."
Yes, a rosy scenario is still possible, that "it's not so bad".
But a black scenario is also still possible. Health-care workers are disproportionately affected, have much higher infection rates due to close proximity and starting to run out of protective gear already in the first weeks of the crisis, and death rates and "just them older doctors" we should care about dying more than is needed, as they have a lot of experienced their loss represents long term damage to the health system. The capacity of the health care system is not constant through a "acute" overload, but could be significantly damaged leading to a protracted under capacity to deal with other disease anyways; the author does not mention the benefits he points out in his rosy scenario are not assured, but also unknown, since the author is unable to think critically. In an overloaded scenario many more young people may die without treatment; this number is also unknown, extrapolating from the cruise ship numbers is not a valid proxy to the "run wild" hypothesis. Letting it run rampant also maximizes the probability and also evolutionary pressure to mutate into something worse. Long term damage to lungs and other organs is also among the things unknown at this point, especially without treatment which would result from no social distancing. Also critically, re-infection, due to losing immunity in a relatively short time or then mutation, is also unknown; so, letting the virus run rampant cannot be assumed to provide everyone immunity, and the virus may come back as a second wave pandemic putting us back to square one but with a severely damaged health system and maybe a worse virus to deal with.
That the black scenarios can't be ruled out is why all the measures being seen are taken by every country that has an exponential outbreak, and strict quarantine and travel restriction are being put in place by countries that do, as another social distancing measures, and countries that don't in order to carry out the containment strategy competently to buy time to prepare and learn from failed policy cases; including now Trump! is doing some extreme social distancing like stopping planes, and various states individually as well are going more extreme to fill the policy gaps!
The idea of "letting it run its course" was investigated, governments put competent statisticians on the job; no country would be stopping nearly all economic activity if rosy scenarios weren't essentially all ruled out at this point. The author doesn't mention this, because the author wittingly or unwittingly, wants his readers to imagine that government's just listen to lefty snowflake twitter users to make decisions.
Wha't the reasoning for attacking Trump's own decisions now of taking things "super seriously", indeed deciding to have taken it super seriously from the beginning and now implementing severe measures? That the "libs got so loud that Trump was forced to act on the left's snowflake delusions." It's a crazy line of argument to imagine that the left is actually in charge, somehow, now that the stock market it tanking and Trump is no longer "sticking it to the left" by downplaying the pandemic as "just a flu".
It's the most stupendous feet of double think that I have so far witnessed in the political scene.
If you want to criticize the reaction, criticize the administration that is currently in charge of the reaction.
If you want to criticize the lack of data needed to create a optimum strategy in terms of "life lost from the virus" and "life lost due to reactive and overdone policies affecting the economy", then criticize the administration for A. abandoning effective containment and contact tracing so that little time was bought to figure out the information needed B. fumbling the layup "make tests available" to do random sampling as well as track symptomatic cases and C. not doing random sampling testing even now to have a clear idea of what the situation is now.
But anyhoo, good to see spending a few billions to save lives is more an issue than spending trillions on wars.
Eventually it will also come to deathcare. Who will bury the survivors? The funeral homes and cementery workers will be pushed to their limit of capacity. In both showing compassion and physical strength.
Jewish people will be extra hard hit in funeral arrangements, because they have to bury their dead in 24 hours after the event. There will be a bidding war, whose dearly departed will be seen to the last rites before the other one, and before the 24 hours run out. Funeral directors will have to work round the clock, and there isn't enough manpower to man the station, the crematoria, the plot digging, the stone erecting, stone carving, prayers, etc. etc. Some cemeteries have no extra plots... and so an and so forth.
Some segments of the economy will suffer a sudden death or premature death: old folks homes, walker- and wheelchair manufacturing and distributing industry, seeing that for a short while there won't be old people.
Yes, but only because the rosy scenarios have clearly been essentially ruled out by nearly everyone who's following along. The author is still a hold out for roses literally raining down from the sky upon us.
The author goes to some length to try to show a scenario where the CFR is not so much worse than the flu, as well as a rosy scenario where, even if it wasn't, just "letting it pass" will save more lives as the health system can at least get back to treating everything else quickly.
The CFR not mattering is only above a threshold, that has clearly been passed but this author doesn't accept, since the author still tries to dance under this threshold by making very large range of estimates, based on cherry picking even among the data that's currently available, and then saying: "see, it could be super low, still just in the noise of normal coughs that kill old people all the time".
So, given this advanced state of delusions, my answer focused on the main problem with this reasoning, even just internally assuming his estimates, which is that "well, it could be super high too; obviously", and that equally obviously "not having the information" the author wants is not some necessary fact of the situation we just have to deal with by underplaying things, but a choice by leaders. That we don't have the information is a criticism of the people not going and getting the information, not a criticism of the people worried that things may be on the worse end of the wide estimate windows as well as everything else the author doesn't consider.
There's also the possibility governments aren't flying as blind as the author thinks, but have gotten out and gotten the information, but haven't published it because it isn't good and we can deduce it isn't good because of the policies being put into place.
But yes, there's so much wrong in this "statistician's" analysis that we could go basically sentence by sentence and demonstrating cherry picked data, making factually incorrect statements such as social distancing "we don't know will work", unsupported conclusions from his own premises, not balancing the rosy scenario of "it could be on the low end" with black scenarios of "it could be on the high end".
You're right. I was wrong.
Oh, I remember now. They may have suppressed the individual rights of the human beings, but the quality control over chemical manufacturing, esp. over pill industry, may be stringent. I DON'T KNOW THIS, AND I AM NOT MAKING ANY CLAIMS. I am just presenting it as a possibility.
As such, the human rights may be the pits, but that does not NECESSARILY influence the quality of medical drugs they produce.
That's what I had in mind. Again, you may be perfectly right, I don't know any facts what goes on in China.
I don't think this is quite fair. If they could have just given the airlines billions to solve the problem; some expensive device that instantly diagnoses flyers and so you can contain perfectly, then they would have spent that money gladly.
The problem was that effective containment of stopping 10 to 20 percent of world air travel would have depressed the airline and boeing and airbus stock temporarily.
War spending is also short term stimulus and hand outs to a lot of cronies. All pandemic responses are anti-economic stimulus and only permit hand outs to relatively few cronies.
Now that the problem has advanced to a crisis big enough to hand out trillions of dollars to their cronies in every industry, they're pretty quick on the draw. Not that they consciously chose for things to play out until this point, just that there was no visible action points until now.
I sincerely doubt it but we'll never know. It's just interesting to me that approaches are discussed in terms of economics and its long term effects. Where was that discussion going into Iraq, Afghanistan, war on drugs etc. Etc.?
1. Why the wave of sick people ramps up so high so quickly, and
2. Why herd immunity takes over so quickly after that.
It's a bump in the road, not a plague.
Normally this is the case for the kind of comment the author makes. But the author does his utmost cleverest to be even stupider, and throws out scenarios like :
So this is why the usual response of "1 percent is still huge" doesn't work for this author.
But we're in agreement, I was writing just the first-order argumentative mistakes for people that would otherwise take it as serious analysis.
Quoting Benkei
Yes, we may never know, but if the problem was indeed "hyped" by the left-wing, and billions of dollars could be given to the airlines to save "a few lives", I think it would be carried out, a win-win scenario: politicians "acted", airlines and whoever provides the tech stock goes up, people's lives saved.
Quoting Benkei
Definitely, but I think my explanation more or less covers it: wars, including the drug war, are fuel for corruption and has at least some short term economic stimulus of spending cash. They also create groups of people "to blame" for things and achieve these sorts of propaganda objectives over a long time frame.
Yes, granted that the virus came from China creates a little propaganda opportunity, but ultimately the incompetence of managing the crisis at every subsequent point to the Chinese coverup cannot be blamed on the Chinese. It's like if I push you and you then go jump off a cliff 100 meters away; yes I shouldn't have pushed you, but my action isn't related to your self-harming actions later. Even Trump supporters may be able to see this obvious logic considering the time frame is so short; many are impressively immune, updating their beliefs Trump is not to blame for anything in real time, but we will see if this applies to all members of the flock.
This is not a correct analysis, even if the premise "there are about 10 asymptomatics" is true.
Asymptomatic's refer only to people who do not have symptoms when they are tested. They do not include people who were asymptomatic when they were tested and then went on to develop symptoms.
1. In an exponentially expanding phase -- an acceleration phase of a logistics curve of total past-and-present-infected, for those who think Musk has a meaningful contribution to the conversation -- it is to be expected to find lot's of asymptotics as the population of newly-infected is much larger than the population where the disease has progressed to a state of symptoms. So statistics will point in this direction, but it is an illusion.
2. Herd immunity will take over at some point; true, but not necessarily quickly. It is not guaranteed it would take over after the first wave. The first wave may setup a second, third, fourth, and n'th wave that can be as bad or worse than the first wave. Some diseases do not provide long term immunity even if you get them and recover, and mutation can get around immunity.
Quoting frank
I have never even used the word plague, so great straw man.
But in anycase, a pointless truism. If your standard is the "black plague"; sure, not a plague on that scale; if you want to move the goalposts to the black plague, go ahead; no one's being saying it's as bad as the black plague here.
What matters, in terms of policy response, is if the fatality rate is higher than society's willingness to just tolerate it and just go about its business. And the ecological definition of a plague fits what's happening and why we're seeing severe policy responses.
Now, if you think society should just "tolerate it" then make that argument. If you think, well no something must be done, but it's just a "bump", in terms of deaths and economic disruption, on a larger historic timescale, then explain what size bump it is and why things will normalize quickly on the time-scale you're considering.
That way you have energy to deal with with what you've got. I'm in an emergency room now preparing for a 12 hour shift. Wish me luck. :)
Indeed. Glad you've found it useful!
Quoting Baden
By my calculation, at the current trend of doubling every 2.5 days (case data here), the identified US cases would hit half a million by the end of this month. And 50 million by the middle of next month.
Any thoughts on why our math differs here? Perhaps you have a longer doubling period? Anyone else want to check the numbers?
The case growth has remained exponential despite the applied measures to date, as shown in the logarithmic graph here. Note that the same NYT article suggests we may need to wait up to two weeks to see if the most recent measures have their desired effect. But if ineffective, in two weeks the identified cases would be 1.2 million. With an estimated 5% requiring ICU beds (based on China data), the US would need 60k ICU beds, but the total number of ICU beds in the US is only 50-100k (which also need to serve non-coronavirus patients).
So in two weeks, if current measures don't work, doctors will need to start deciding who to save and who to let die, as Italy is doing now. In my view, this makes the case for nationwide lockdown now, as there's no time to wait and see if current measures are effective.
Hopefully in the end everything goes well with this pandemic. And there's reason to believe so. Even if Covid-19 is a killer like the H1N1 virus of the Spanish Flu, the precautions already taken DO have an effect. Let's not forget that the Spanish Flu got it's name from Spain only because the country didn't have cencorship, which obviously made the pandemic worse. Or those hundreds of thousands of soldiers coming back home from the epidemic area of the battlefields.
That China has had so few deaths tells really that modern medicine and drastic measures work. I still believe that likely we don't get to the numbers of fatalities of the 1968/69 Hong Kong-flu pandemic which killed 1 million around the World. But the economic recession is real, unfortunately.
I have heard unconfirmed reports that despite the situation in Italy, Quarantine still isn't strictly observed there by everyone. People are still meeting in Cafes and the like. Boggles the mind.
It shows that 0% of the US cases are serious.
Do you take into account the effect of "social distancing" and the lock downs?
You see for a logarithmic scale to continue, you would need to have people mingle as they did few weeks ago. Or put it another way. Why are there less new infections than before in China. Surely there would have to be tens if not hundreds of thousands dead by now. So is the Chinese authorities just covering up everything? Do you think that is possible in our time?
I'm extrapolating purely from the reported US case numbers in the table here. Yes, there are lots of unknowns, including cases missed due to inadequate testing, and the effects of the the NY and CA lockdowns. I discuss those where I use the term "measures".
Quoting ssu
No, China's measures were effective.
The comparison with the US situation is that China's measures were stronger, made earlier in their epidemic and severely enforced. They shut down Wuhan when their identified case count was only 400 in a day whereas there were 5000 new identified cases in the US yesterday. China shut down 15 further cities the following day.
That 0% hides an exponential growth curve. Those case and death numbers are doubling every 2-3 days.
And that is a great looking logarithmic scale growth to extrapolate from.
But notice that the information itself has an effect here. When you get greater numbers, you get greater panic and more drastic measures. That will have an effect on the forecast and the extrapolation may need what in economics and statistic is called a Dummy variable.
For example, now New York City has 43+ deaths from corona virus. What do you think the effect would be if it would be in few weeks it would be 400 or 4 000? I figure the amount wouldn't be quite high when the lockdown and the curfew will be enforce by police and the national guard, which will stop people walking in the street.
This is just insane. There's so many things wrong with this I don't know where to start. It seems that reality has caught up to the "I'm a contrarian for style" attitude towards reasoned discourse.
First, this sentence "people always do the best they can with what they know" only makes even any descriptive sense if you assume people are doing their best according to the same ethical scale, which is obviously not true. The serial killer might be doing his best and the police trying to catch him might be doing his best too, but the detective is unlikely to reason "well, he's doing his best with the information he has about how to kill people and get away with it, but people make mistakes, time to move on". It is obviously the ethical difference of what "doing one's best is" which creates the conflicting situation for the detective.
I have made it quite clear in my analysis that there is an ethical difference with Western leadership in this situation, that they wanted to protect the stock market over people's lives. We can go into the evidence for this if you really want to be that cool a contrarian. I have a lot of time on my hands ... but something tells me you may not have time to go into it in the weeks to come.
So, even if I admitted the premise that "everyone's doing their best with the information they have" in a sort of kindergarten playground view of politics where as long as a politician is just as reasonable as the stupidest member of their base, we should empathize with their hurt feelings for being called out on starting a war based on "intelligence fixed around the policy", or giving trillions of dollars to their corporate friends, or passing or defending existing laws making corruption legal -- even if I admitted that premise, if such people have an incompatible ethic to mine, if their goal is to create a crony system to line their pockets, then it's an even greater problem for me if they indeed are "doing their best".
But of course the premise isn't true. Criminal negligence exists as a crime precisely because people don't "always do their best with the information they have". Are you really defending the position that criminal negligence has never occurred? People have always done their best and perceived victims and the justice system should always just "move on" in such situation?
What's worse than throwing down some truisms, that aren't even really good truisms, is the implication of your argument that people should therefore not be held responsibility for mistakes and everyone should move on.
The whole premise of democracy is to get better management in place, not continuously excuse bad management, so, if they are "just mistakes" clearly they're pretty big mistakes and the argument could be made that maybe a first or second grade level of learning ability and critical thinking should be aimed for.
This is not a joke, I'm pretty sure I could explain exponential growth to a precocious first grader or your average second grader (at least in countries with evenly funded, high standards, public education), as they know basic addition and multiplication, and so explain why the disease will propagate really quickly, hurt a lot of people if nothing's done, why containment is important early on, and the basis of social distancing so doctors can help everyone. These are all really simple concepts and all that's needed to understand to make good decisions.
The idea decisions couldn't have been better really is premised on the idea that leadership shouldn't be expected to have an analysis more sophisticated than a kindergarten child. Either, literally the case with Trump who a first and second grader would be able to tell is not making any sense, or then in a sort of plausible deniability "no one saw this coming" sort of way to indeed cover for mistakes (but not the mistake of trying to save people's lives but just not having information about that, the mistake of thinking inaction would be good for the stock market and being disastrously wrong so, now that that's clear, pretending to be an idiot sounds better than explaining what information was known when, and why inaction was chosen over action).
Quoting frank
I wish your patients luck. As for you personally, you'll get what you deserve in this situation.
What obvious logic? I agree that Trumps initial response was bad PR, he went all out to claim the problem was under control while it was not. However, I do not see a problem with the actions he took. He quickly (much more quickly than e.g. European countries) introduced travel restrictions, and appointed a Corona Tsar to coordinate further actions. What exactly should he have done that he did not?
I feel the strong smell of TDS here again.... orangeman bad, no matter what.
I'm just going to appreciate this beautiful exercise in mental gymnastics, let it stand a bit as a refined and advanced example of the double-think talent, and then completely demolish it.
So in other words you can not give a concrete example of what Trump should have done that he did not. Figures.
So the 0% is bad?
Did you even read to the end of the sentence?
Why would saying I'll do something later imply I am unable to do it?
I can't go into this now, because the layers of denial are so thick that it will take more work to fully explain every reasoning mistake you are committed to.
But to give one simple example, so you don't live in some illusion in the meantime that I'm delaying because "I can't deliver", Trump could have seen that relying on a single test process was a large risk; that "diversification" is a key risk reduction strategy.
Mitigating actions of a test failure would have been:
1. Had one or two parallel test-kids developed by other companies to increase the odds one is successful at scaling quickly in the critical first outbreak phase (where all reductions in infection rates have the highest return on investment; Tump's a business mad so surely understands that concept).
2. Negotiate to fly-in some tests short term (maybe in exchange) if testing is delayed, perhaps in exchange for money as well as promise to fly back even more tests when things are sorted out in the US. Because, you know, he's the president and can phone up other leaders and "make a deal".
3. Invest and re-organize in scaling tests as quickly as possible once the problems were solved.
Sure, it was also bad PR to claim the "Anybody that needs a test gets a test; they're there, they have the tests, and the tests are beautiful" and "The tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect, the transcription was perfect, right? [...] This was not as perfect as that, but pretty good.", but it was also terrible decision in the real world of managing the test situation.
As the "doctor" I criticize above points out, it's difficult to make decisions without good information, so anyone managing this crisis at a first or second grade critical thinking level would have been very focused on the tests and making sure they happen quickly.
It's like starting a fire in your house. In the beginning it's just a candle and the fire is "contained" so nothing to worry about, then the candle falls over due to making a half-asked effort to put the candle correctly in the candle holder. The fire starts to spread, but at first it's only "0%", if rounding to 1 digit, of the house, not to mention the county or the state or the entire world (most of the world's ocean anyways, immune to wood-based fires!).
Then the fire grows, consumes the house, jumps to the woods, causes a massive forest fire that is some meaningful percent of the state, burns down whole towns ... but because people aren't flying this fire all over the world, it's stilled contained to it's geographic area due to the physical dynamics of how fires spread, it doesn't become a significant percent globally ... so I guess this analogy doesn't lead to something you would actually consider a problem.
However, for the sake of argument, imagine people do fly the fire all over the world, well now there's a global problem, very expensive, all started from a mismanaged candle. If you want a "natural" trigger, just replace the candle with a lightening strike in a field and the town fire department saying "well, it's not a whole percent of the world yet, so we will wait to act".
The most cost-effective time to stop the fire is before it's out of control. Once it becomes out of control, "not everyone will die" isn't really relevant to people and governments dealing with the fire.
I have no idea who you are but remaining humble is my suggestion for a start on how to deal on an interpersonal level with others.
What I quoted above is a direct attack on a fellow thinker who also happens to be on the front line of this war so either say something positive to another member or say nothing at all.
What a small person to attack someone trying to help others, pathetic.
AND as far as doing the best we can with what we have and what we know IS the best many of us can do.
Just back off the personal attacks and we might just get somewhere POSITIVE.
And Frank, my every energy is with you and you wife to help keep YOU safe.
Good energies surround you from me :pray:
I understand all of this is being done.
I fail to see what he could have done differently in concrete terms, He reacted quickly, and as I pointed out, quicker than other European countries (although not as quick as Taiwan and Singapore, I give you that. But those places, being Chinese, arguably had a lot better insight of what is going on in the PRC).
It's not an attack. It's a prediction. I predict you can't avoid the consequences of an overloaded medical system if you are a medical professional. It's essentially a mathematical certainty at this point.
Yes, I would expect those things to have an effect. But as we've seen elsewhere, those effects may not register in the figures for up to 2 weeks (some of those who got the virus the day before the lockdown may not be tested for up to two weeks). And the success of the lockdown depends on how well it is enforced in practice (see the Milan example quoted above), as well as the specifics of the lockdown. Another factor is that testing may still be inadequate so the base numbers themselves may be much higher right now.
As it happens I was in New York City until last weekend (and in LA a few days ago), so I've seen firsthand how long it takes for social distancing and other measures to properly take hold. Problems may surface with the lockdowns as well.
Then there's the potential effect of overwhelmed hospitals and health workers. The available ICU beds and health workers are critical factors.
So whether we see 400 or 4000 or more in a few weeks would seem to depend crucially on whether the needed measures are made soon enough.
(Got to go now but will follow up tomorrow.)
You can state what you believe to be fact without personal attacks. Saying you get what you deserve was stated in a personal way to Frank.
Own it and apologize or own it and not apologize. Either way it's a reflection on you.
You provide the counter examples to your own argument. That's not a good debate tactic.
South Korea is also a great example of what competence looks like.
The problem grows exponentially in the outbreak phase. Every doubling time matters a whole lot; indeed doubles the problem. Doing the things that should have been done, only later, is not at all the same thing as doing them on time. This will take some math to explain (and any leader we expect to be running at an above kindergarten thinking level would be able to understand), so I will fully develop it in my full response to your previous comment.
Only if people think that there's nothing to see there. What percentage do you think it should be before taking action?
It's not a personal attack. It's a personal prediction, but I have strong arguments for why the prediction will come true.
If my prediction is untrue, then can come back and say "nope, didn't encounter any unusual difficulties due to corona virus; I was completely right to downplay the threat, whatever small mistakes the administration made in failing to contain or prepare seriously in February didn't really have much impact on how things played, we should move on from those small details, can verify myself all doctors who were super concerned and crying wolf feel silly now".
It's only a "meany attack" if my analysis is right in which case a medical professional that downplays my analysis will suffer the consequences personally.
Ignoring a danger and then suffering the consequences of that danger is a textbook definition of "getting what you deserve". As someone with some sort of medical authority, could have had much higher impact on helping to prepare himself and his colleagues as well as shape public opinion.
certainly assumes he's done the best he can with the information I've provided here and, more importantly, medical professionals around the world. Again, if that premise is wrong, and he could have done better with the information he's had access to, he'll get what he deserves in not doing his best for himself and his patients.
So, my conclusion follows from my premise. What matters is the premise.
In terms of the medical system, political leadership and society as a whole, excusing all the mistakes that have been made, means keeping people who are not acting in the public interest or not competent (or both) exactly where they are, not learning anything and so inviting the same mistakes next time or for some other crisis (which could be tomorrow).
It was uncalled for and unappreciated.
Thanks! It's strangely quiet right now (with rumbling in the distance) :grimace:
This is true, but there is also the crucial moment measured in days just when the pandemic got rolling on. When it started in Italy, Europe or the West hadn't got the pandemic hysteria. Now when it has truly started in the US, the population takes action.
And just how successful that "social distancing"? If we take into consideration that China has roughly about 24 more times people than Italy, then it wouldn't be that China has less deaths. Yet month ago when the epidemic started in Italy and when there were only a handful of deaths the actions were taken only regionally. The CNN journalist one month ago were reporting from a Venice quite full with tourists going around.
Would be even greater if there wouldn't have been patient 31. This tells just how much things are prone to the butterfly effect:
Actually now 8799 cases and 102 deaths and counting.
This is still more medical authority compared to someone who knows nothing about medicine.
Of course you believe you did the best you could with the information you had, as you believe that about everyone it seems. I am predicting you will see in this crisis why such an assumption is erroneous.
If we assume people above us in authority are "doing the best they can" then there's no reason to challenge them, nor mitigate bad decisions that we see happening.
Even if you don't perceive you have any authority at all to persuade about respiratory illness or the consequences of running out of respiratory equipment, sharing correct analysis with colleagues who do have "authority", as you would consider it, could have better informed them if they were otherwise busy resulting in the best decisions according to your social theory, as well as informing your close circles and social media circles, doing your part to fight misinformation that the crisis can be downplayed (of course, assuming my analysis is largely correct; if the crisis is overblown, then there are no lessons to learn).
Yes, I think that's how philosophy works: people argue their case.
However, I disagree with your implication that I am arguing "my intention was good" and so excuses an act that is "in fact harmful" according to some definition of harm that can be automatically assumed.
My intention is to make a true argument and persuade people on a personal level, not some abstract version of a person where nothing said is ever permitted to be discomforting to the real person the abstraction represents.
Debate is very personal, and as much an emotional struggle than a logical one.
My goal is to bring my A game to debate, not simply to completely demolish my opponents arguments, as construed in some neutral abstract language, but to crush their will to continue to present such arguments.
There can indeed be casualties in such an exchange, people who can't "take it" (finding out their world view isn't as solid as they thought), maybe Frank is such a person and maybe not, and so maybe he can learn and grow if I'm right (or then prove me wrong if I'm wrong, to give me the chance to learn and grow in that case), and I justify my intention on the grounds that finding the truth, not simply abstractly but in real terms that only exist in a personal way, is necessary for society to avoid the kinds of mistakes we are seeing play out in a very personal way for everyone impacted by the crisis.
To remove the personal, is, in my view, to abandon personal responsibility.
It is the Republicans that are the snowflakes according to their own definition, hiding behind what they believe are leftest standards of discussion whenever they don't have an answer for their beliefs, such as excusing Trump's actions.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
Uncalled for by whom? Unnapreciated by whom?
The people I disagree with here and am in debate with?
An insult is an insult because it's factually incorrect, in basically every world view that can be credibly entertained. Pointing out people will live the consequences of believing wrong things (unless they have enough wealth to insulate themselves from the consequences of their actions) is not an insult. It's simply true, and serves the purpose of inviting people to reflect on how what's true and false impacts their personal lives. It's fun to play the denial game, send "serious analysis people" running in circles, until it's not fun anymore because the problem being denied has a personal impact.
And this is what's fairly unique about this crisis: it affects also affluent Westeners that respond well to denialist or "we can't be sure" argument, and impacts them on a massive scale; it's not even "just some Westerners" over there dealing with a forest fire or a hurricane or a job loss or medical bankruptcy (where people can say: "well, don't live there or don't work there! dummy dum, don't rely on the government for a competent response!!"), it's everywhere. The same propaganda tactics have been used to ignore plenty of other crisis in terms of human or other creatures suffering; those tactics work because the people who believe them don't suffer the consequences of those policies.
What's so interesting in this crisis, philosophically to me anyway, is that people are believing the same propaganda tactics yet it's clashing with the consequences appearing in their personal lives on the time span of days. There's no time to put a new face to the same lies or recruit new fools as old fools wise up.
People downplaying until a few days ago were basically saying "ha, Europe, snowflakes; Trump knows that it's not so bad and no reason to overreact and stop entire economies! It's hysteria whipped up by the left to try to damage Trump, don't believe it!".
Now those same people are saying "Trump took it super seriously, did everything he could!". It's wild. Even on this forum, not to mention conservative pundits and social media echo chambers.
The only good thing that can come out of this immense tragedy is excising this mental disease carefully nurtured by propaganda over decades, and not just Trump supporters but the general framework of neoliberalism that permeates academia, bureaucratic policy making circles and the rich and powerful.
275 US deaths from coronavirus.
Current % of US cases of coronavirus considered severe: 0.
You're saying the deaths weren't considered severe before they died?
Or that currently there are no severe cases because the severe cases died and no new ones have developed to severe yet or then data hasn't been updated yet?
You do realize the argument is deaths will double, and then keep doubling until it burns through the population or then is brought under control by social distancing measures?
That doubling something many times results in very big numbers. Yes, it's physically impossible that the virus keeps doubling until it outweighs the entire universe; Elon Musk is certainly good to criticize any doctor that was worrying about such a possibility in talking about exponential growth. However, it's not impossible the infection keeps doubling until it causes severe problems for the medical system; so severe that actions are needed because people don't accept just letting people die where actions can do something about it (some people don't mind this, but the fact is most people do mind and that's why government after government is taking actions to either contain or bring their outbreak under control).
That the argument is about what numbers we'll see in the future, and that the present numbers and how things have gone elsewhere is the basis for that argument about the future.
The data I posted in a post above showed 0% (rounded, it wasn't 0 in actual cases) of current cases were severe. That's the data.Quoting boethius
Your math is wrong. The spread is exponential, not the death rate. The spread doesn't discriminate. The death rate does, based upon current medical condition.
https://www.government.is/news/article/2020/03/15/Large-scale-testing-of-general-population-in-Iceland-underway/
We'll see if this update, whatever it's supposed to mean, will stay accurate for long.
No, your math is wrong.
The spread does discriminate, based on social distancing measures. It's exponential, during the first outbreak phase, if those measures aren't effective or not even tried.
The death rate is some percentage of the infection rate, without discrimination, not detached from it, for one part. Medical conditions, the discriminatory part, get worse as the system overloads, increasing the death rate.
There's a lag in the data. The same site says zero new cases in Ireland today but 126 have been reported. And mild is probably the default before cases are classified. You need to use your common sense when looking at different figures on different sites and cross-reference.
Literally 5 days ago:
Quoting boethius
Just as predictably, the real world outcome of this "PR delay" is to make the situation that much worse.
I figure there'll be flattening as more stringent measures are imposed, so my figure involves a continued fall-off in the log curve along recent Italian lines.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/
To me that looks like it'll peak before 100,000 cases. Scale up to America and they should slow down and peak before 1 million (I'm guessing in a couple of months) presuming increasingly strict measures (short of "hammer"-like moves, which still seem unlikely on a national level).
Quoting Hanover
No, it wouldn't because these efforts are not futile. It's been done. You need to go read.
You are just looking at the mathematics but forget that massive ressources are being thrown at developing treatment for this. I think you will be surprised how soon some treatment is available, and then the statistics will look completely different.
Nobody knows when a treatment or vaccine will become available. If it does happen very soon, yes, it will change things and you can then work that into the maths. You can't work it in when it doesn't exist.
That is just your TDS speaking here. Trumps initial over-optimistic public statements were bad PR, but at the same time he acted fast and correctly. There is nothing concrete to critiziise here, you are just parrotting the Trump-hating "mainstream" media.
That is why flattening the curve is important... to avoid overloading the system.
Hopefully the number of people recovering will out number the number of new cases, but I doubt the number of new cases will stop. It would require everyone to isolate against everyone else, which is impossible. Also there is the risk that the virus will exist dormant in carriers and emerge randomly in the future. So as soon as isolation is relaxed it will peak again.
Perhaps these stop and start episodes will reduce in intensity over time until some longer term strategies are developed. In the meantime, such things as economy's will be a thing of the past.
We were discussing the situation in the UK, not the US.
Get a grip.
Nobody knows for sure when, but humankind has a long history of solving problems in an emergency situation, and here we have to unique case that almost the whole world is up against one common enemy. Never bet against our species when it comes to inventing new weapons to win a war, and we are in war against this virus.
LOL, sorry, with TDS being rampant as it is, I reflexively think somebody is ranting against orangeman agan. Then again, poor Boris is getting almost the same treatment from the media.
All of this drop in rate of new cases can't be attributed to the quarantine measures; people would have probably isolated themselves regardless. But the effect of cutting off as many transmission vectors as possible should not be underestimated.
This is still exponential, in a local region of time, just that the doubling time is getting steadily longer [i]according to official diagnosis[/].
Since the system is starting to collapse, the growth of cases could be limited by testing.
Of course, hopefully the exponential growth rate, on a local time scale, is slowing towards inflection in a larger logistics functions (sometime soon).
Although it seems reasonable to assume the measures "are surely working", cause they seem pretty extreme, to get to linear or even exponential-decaying growth rate soon, it is possible the social distancing measures are still maintaining exponential growth, certainly slower than everyone going to restaurants and work and so on, but still exponential.
Effective measures, in a numerical sense, could still mean extending the doubling time, such as to weeks instead of days is still effective. However, doubling the cases in a month rather than 3 days is still pretty effective, numerically speaking; a lot of effort could be needed simply to go from 3 day doubling time to 3 week doubling time, and we don't know if that effort is above or below what Italy has done.
They are having their doubts too, why they have now called in the army to enforce the quarantine better (rather than just help with logistics, such as taking away dead bodies, as they've been doing up until now).
For instance, in China there was observed cases that seem to have spread through pipes. It could spread through vents too, or perhaps even balcony to balcony when the wind is right. There's also just the spread due to movement that is still happening: essential services, going to grocers, etc.
Where exponential growth has been stopped, we saw either earlier measures (such as with South Korea with a classic containment strategy implemented by competent individuals before it was too late to do), or then more extreme (such as China barricading people into neighborhoods and doing a "gate hand-doff" for delivering supplies, and that's assuming their numbers are some basis of what's been going on, which I don't want to just assume because I trust China but experts seem to agree they could not hide continued exponential growth, just hide a lot of the cases and deaths that did happen; such as just letting whoever dies in barricaded neighborhoods and not counting those in the statistics and then passing "no negative opinion about the government" laws to cover it up). Italy was neither early like South Korea nor as extreme as Wuhan, so we cannot conclude Italy measures are "enough" until they actually work.
I definitely hope they are enough, because all of Europe seems passed the "South Korea uses initiative and foresight to get on-top of the problem strategy". Europe has lot's of apartment blocks with old pipes and air ventilation systems. Oh, and still no one's bothered to check if you can get the virus in the mail.
Quoting fdrake
I don't understand this. For me "quarantine measures" are basically being used to refer to all measures to cut off transmission vectors.
Though technically, quarantine is isolation a potential cases to see if they become cases, whereas all things that cut down transmission vectors is called social distancing. However, in this technical sense, quarantine is the most effective social distancing measure we have.
Are you trying to say something different?
Quoting wikipedia - coronavirus pandemic in Italy
Although this week has reduced the growth rate compared to the week previous which was consistently above 20%, this could represent testing decoupling from new infections, or just a new growth rate that would be sustained until the critical 60-70% of the population is infected (and inflection would occur just because the virus is running out of hosts).
Maybe measures are working and we'd be below 10% next week, and then start to get towards linear growth the week after and then decay the week after that.
Or maybe more measures are needed to get it under control, such as marshal law to enforce the quarantine, as happened today.
No one's calling it marshal law, but that's what it is:
Quoting Wikipedia - Marshal Law
The Italy case is not cause for too much optimism.
Exactly 1 month ago, there were 21 cases diagnosed in Italy. Now there is marshal law.
Here's what Bill Gates once said we needed do to prevent a crisis like the coronavirus, and what we need to do to stop the next pandemic (Sinéad Baker, Business Insider, Mar 2020)
This is what Bill Gates had to say about epidemics, back in 2015 (Samantha Sault, World Economic Forum, Mar 2020)
Bill Gates warned us of a COVID-19-like pandemic — watch his TED Talk from 2015 (Taylor Soper, GeekWire, Mar 2020)
There was an uptick in growth today and yesterday in Italy, it doesn't swamp the downward trend in new case number acceleration when averaging. What I wrote is a summary of the past trend, not an attempt at extrapolation. What has happened: number of new cases per day's rate of increase has been trending toward 0. You simply don't get that behaviour from an exponential function applied to the entire case number trajectory.
Quoting boethius
"Exponential in a local region of time" is a lot different from "exponential". The initial burst of growth in new cases you get in epidemics is rightly thought of as exponential, even in an uncontrolled environment the rest of it is sub-exponential growth (due to behavioural changes or saturation effects).
If something is exponential, the doubling time doesn't change. (edit, well, if you have exponential growth and observe a population at time [math]t_1[/math], the population will be doubled at [math](ln(2)/B)+t_1[/math] where B is the growth rate, there won't be any "local changes in doubling rate" between the two time points, editedit: well, there will be changes in the derivatives of the curve between the two time points, but no changes in growth parameter).
That's what I explain: it maybe going towards linear growth, but right now it's still exponential growth, some percentage of the population is growing each iteration.
We cannot "know" which case it is. I'm not arguing against the hypothesis that it's downward trending.
I'm just presenting the fact that we cannot assume it's downward trending, it could be a new local (in terms of time) equilibrium of a new growth rate.
Quoting fdrake
No, I get it. That's why I peppered my statements with "local in time", and I've explained multiple times that exponential growth in this context is short hand for acceleration phase of a logistics function which itself maybe only part of a bigger function on a longer time scale (such as several mass quarantine, relaxing mass-quarantine and peak phases).
However, insofar as the growth is best described as some percentage of the population, then we are still in the exponential growth regime (locally in time).
The quibble that it will eventually stop growing exponentially and be part of another curve is really ridiculous.
It's like saying orbits are not ellipses because eventually a black whole might come through the solar system and make the planets all go in a different curve. Or saying "exponential interest on loans" isn't a real thing because eventually the computer disk space to represent the loan would be heavier than the universe.
All curves describing some real phenomena have a explicit or implied time domain where the observation is valid and some argument why over-fitting the data with a "better curve" would be worse than the proposed curve.
Exponential growth describes how it's "growing now on a timescale we care about".
If we just want to quibble about terminology, I could say "axxuuually, individual viruses and individual infections are discrete events and not described by any curve at all, and anyone not talking discrete mathematics is misrepresenting the situation!" See, it's true, but no productive because the people with the knowledge to understand a mathematical description of what's going on should have the knowledge to put things in context. No one has ever claimed viruses would outweigh the universe (as Elon Musk has pointed out won't happen, or do you think that's like "totally valid criticism of the talk around epidemiology right now"?).
Maybe it's A. decaying towards zero shortly, but maybe not, it might be just representing B. testing no longer keeping up with the growth rate (that testing cannot scale as fast as infections due to logistics problems), or then C. a new steady growth rate for "a while" that requires more policy measures to reduce during that "while" we care about.
Once this situation is created, it becomes very difficult to know what's actually happening, so eventually policy makers just "do everything" when they realize what a single doubling period actually means to the system. Was it needed to barricade people into neighborhoods in Wuhan? Maybe not, or maybe it's essential to get out of the exponential regime. We don't really know.
I can't really be bothered continuing this.
Though I will ask for sources on this use of local exponential trend? Genuinely curious. I can see the appeal of having a model that splits the time trend like that.
Rounded, right.
Ever thought being critical about data? Especially one that simply doesn't add up? You really think NOBODY is hospitalized or in intensive care in the US for corona-virus??? Or just less than 0,5% of those observed to be infected need hospital treatment.
It's not like people are stopped on the street and made corona-virus tests in the US. Or they would come knocking on your home door to make the test.
This is just how scientists talk. I can provide plenty of examples of scientists using implied domain of validity in talking about fitting curves to data or modeling some phenomena.
Epidemiologists and ecologists talk in terms of exponential growth of a population, to explain infestation, invasive species, plagues. They say "bacteria will grow exponentially"; they then explain in the theory that "as long as there's enough food, no toxins and no predation". So, when they observe something growing exponentially they say "this is growing exponentially" like a virus replicating from cell to cell or from person to person.
Nuclear explosions are also described in terms of exponential reactions, yet, again, physicists aren't saying the reaction will grow exponentially until the nuclear bomb weighs more than the universe.
It's a useful estimate of what happens in the next relevant time step and so describes well the reaction in the starting phase.
In the outbreak phase of an epidemic, an exponential function is the best description of what's going to happen next, so they call it "exponential growth". Just like interest payments are exponential as that best describes what happens next, even though it is impossible for any bank to represent numbers that exponential growth will eventually attain.
For the situation in Italy, policy makers want to know if the measures have really gotten (or will get soon) things off an exponential growth curve in the next coming weeks or not; since the policy objective is to get the rate of infection below the health care capacity; due to this context, it doesn't matter to them that the virus would anyways start to burn out as they want to put in place policies that stop exponential growth right now.
So, if the growth rate isn't actually decaying, but still has a sustained doubling period (even 2-3 doubling periods is a significant change to the situation policy makers maybe trying to avoid; maybe even 1 doubling period they are trying to avoid), then policy makers want to put even more social distancing measures.
Of course, the true rate of infection can only be known in hindsight, as there's lag between infection and diagnosis and a sampling bias in who get's diagnosed (unless there's enough testing to have an accurate model overall).
I'm simply making the simple point that going from 3 days doubling time one week to 7 days doubling time, does not necessitate that the next week would be a 2 week doubling time time and soon no doublings at all. At any point in the "slowing down" the infection growth rate could be the new normal (until simply running out of hosts slows the virus, approaching herd immunity, or then even more extreme measures are put in place).
In terms of just empiricism generally, it's completely valid to characterize some data as growing "so far" as "linearly" or "quadratically" or "exponentially" or "sinusoidally". It may simply be true that the data follows such a trend so far and that it's the best function to estimate the next observation. No scientists would understand such a statement to imply the scientist therefore concludes it would continue for ever. Making a better prediction (for instance when it will break with the observed trend) requires a theory and justification. Since data is noisy, there's almost always opportunity to jump on some variation to justify a given model.
Likely, right now in Italy they have a few models of what's happening and don't know what's correct. Since delayed action has proven costly so far they are switching to assuming the worst model: that they are still in an exponential growth regime on a time scale that is intolerable to deal with, so, time to call in the army to maintain a stricter compliance.
Sorry I missed this. This is good news since you're just being facetious for nothing, in my opinion, but I'm in self isolation so have plenty of time to go into minute detail.
Here's your source though:
Quoting Wikipedia - Exponential Growth
Does this satisfy your doubts that the scientific community describes things as growing exponentially if, in some time frame their interested in, the phenomena does grow exponentially?
Or do you want more sources of this language being used.
Do you want me to explain again why your statement:
Quoting fdrake
Cannot be assumed to be true (in the sense biologists might use the word "exponential" in the context of organism growth).
The current policies may support more doubling times in the whole of Italy, which is perhaps why we see more measures. Italy is not similar to South Korea nor Wuhan in terms of situation and policy response, and we simply don't know if the strategy there has or will work controlling the virus on a short time scale of a few weeks (i.e. if Marshal law was necessary, and if so we cannot know if Marshal law as currently implemented solves the problem that the civilian authorities could not solve) , which is the policy objective (large cities, basic services that need to run, building designs, compliance, may not be sufficient to have an outcome similar to Wuhan, assuming for the sake of argument, those numbers are correct).
The reason to be concerned about policy failure in Italy, is because it indicates we may likely see policy failure to control the virus all over the globe; that even with the enormously disruptive measures of mass-quarantine, the virus may still easily overload medical systems.
So did the popular snake-oil psychic Sylvia Browne.
“In around 2020 a severe pneumonia-like illness will spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and the bronchial tubes and resisting all known treatments. Almost more baffling than the illness itself will be the fact that it will suddenly vanish as quickly as it arrived, attack again ten years later, and then disappear completely.”
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sylvia-browne-coronavirus/
1. Political. Politicians are rewarded for appearing to take the crisis seriously. Some news source listed the names of every senator who voted against the US aid package. Reddit ripped up each of them in turn. So for a politician, the path of least resistance is to accept worst case scenarios. This attests to their leadership and caring concern for the people. You would think this would create a pressurized channel of medical equipment, but it hasn't as far as I've seen. Private parties have done more to in that vein than public outlets. Odd.
2. Social inertia. Some people want to follow their habits. Others are always in the middle of, or on the verge of identifying the Antichrist and pleading with people to take shelter underground. But aren't people who want to stay in their ruts usually in the majority? In order to shift the median, you have to make people feel threatened. This can have the effect of creating a mass delusion. For instance, in order to shift the American public in the direction of taking the Soviet Union seriously, the people had to be convinced that the end of the world was near. This feeds back into a political concern: when people feel like they're in the middle of a crisis, they become lax about their values. They overlook misdeeds on the part of the government that they wouldn't have in more sane times. National security become the priority instead of thrift, freedom, or long-term planning.
Think about that in the light of a trillion dollar aid package. We just had a tax cut for the rich, and now a trillion dollars spewed across the economy, but mostly toward corporations? The only reason anyone would vote for that is that they're touched by insanity.
3. The natural world. One of the most popular storytelling themes of our time is the zombie apocalypse. Books could be written about what it signifies. But putting the zombie part to the side for a moment, the image is post-catastrophe. Deserted streets and schools. Fields unsewn. Communications shutdown. Civilization gone. For the rut-dwellers, this is their greatest fear, and so it's cathartic (I'm guessing.) For the AntiChrist identifiers, it's a beloved image: the destruction of the system that holds ruts in place, with maybe a little vengeance for arrogant humanity on the side.
Thoughts?
Also: the opening lines of Lovecraft's The Nameless City for no particular reason:
Why the fuck can’t anybody understand that money flows up, not down, so if you want more economic activity, send money to the bottom. It’s the people at the bottom suddenly losing their access to money that is the cause of this whole crisis, the obvious solution is to just send them money, but, no, instead we need some patchwork of bullshit business bailouts that we hope will indirectly solve the problem.
Socially most people will follow the guidelines as best they can, but if a tighter lockdown is required it will have to be enforced. Some countries are already doing this. Once many thousands of extra ventilators have been manufactured and thousands of temporary health workers prepared each country will eventually be able to relax the controls in a managed way.
In terms of nature, yes it might be a collapse of civilisation moment, although gradual, I don't see anything sudden happening. I think more likely is that we will pull through over the next couple of years with improving treatments, maybe a vaccine and a new way of interacting, which was needed actually.
There will be a big bill to pay, but if every country had the same kind of bill to pay. Presumably they could all right it off in tandem.
Oh and by the way, take care when it gets bad where you are, avoid getting a high dose infection.
P.s. I've just seen a report that obesity and Corona don't mix, especially for folk who are borderline diabetic.
I thought they are planning for some sort of temporary universal income scheme to do just that.
I just hope they take in account that a lot of the people who get that handout will be spending it not for life essentials, but for more unnecessary crap from China.
NOT.
Well, if it flows back to China for more cheap plastic crap, what the difference? Note that I am not claiming there is a perfect solution here. I am just saying the simplistic slogans do not always match reality.
What the f is a "right wing country"? This whole left-right dichotomy is really getting old. Seems to be "right" or "extreme right" simply has become a cover-all label for everything the PC crowd dislikes.
I'm surprised that the Iranian curve is not steeper than this, I wonder how much testing is going on there, or if it is a gestimate.
Well, "the poor" is a vague description, and I have not heard my point about cheap chinese crap mentioned anywhere else, so hardly a slogan. So would you agree that something like foods stamps is a better idea than justing handing out cash?
About your definining "left" and "right" as matter of more free market vs more regulation, OK lets go with that. Surely you do realize that the free market is the engine that produces wealth in the first place, or are you a Bernie Sanders fan?
Yes, but you and I do not know who exactly just lost their livelyhood. Every individual situation is different. That is what so annyoing about discussing politics based on feeling. We can alway pull some sob story out of the hat and thus claim moral superiority.
Who is "they"? What percentage of the population have you interviewed?
Better go back to your talk radio.
I had heard talk about that but then this morning when I searched for news of progress there all I saw were plans to bail out large employers rather than the people they employ. I guess TPTB think it’s safer to err on the side of making sure no freeloading poors get a handout than to err on the side of making sure no hardworking people slip through the cracks.
Quoting Nobeernolife
People will spend it on whatever they think is most necessary. Isn’t the whole point of the free market that whatever people freely choose to spend money on is what deserves that money, rather than big government telling people what’s good for them? If you give poor people money they’ll immediately spend it on whatever they judge is the most needed thing (which for most of them, especially in hard times, will be rent and then food), and whoever is best providing that most valued thing will profit the most, just like markets are supposed to do.
How do you know that? Right now, it seems to be toilet paper.
That was weak.
Really? You find TP in the shops where you live?
Yeah, the scientific community describes things as growing exponentially for as long as they grow exponentially. You may insist on exponential growth if you think you have a good handle on the causal mechanism, and can account both for the function and for the changing exponent, without having to make retrospective adjustments after each new measurement. What you don't do is say: "Oh it's still exponential, because we can still express it as a percentage increase." Because that is just cargo cult science.
No, but I find it’s not just (or even mostly) poor people hoarding it. Because they barely have money to buy it with if they can find it.
This is exactly what I explain in the sentence you reference. If in some time frame of interest (such as "until now"), the data fits an exponential growth curve, scientists will say "it is growing exponentially".
Quoting SophistiCat
Did you even bother reading my comments?
I'm not insisting things will continue to grow exponentially in Italy, I'm saying it's not ruled out by the current data.
17% daily growth rate this week could mean 17% growth rate next week and the week after that and the week after that, until 50% of the population is infected and growth rate reduces due to running out of hosts.
Or, it could indeed mean 5% growth rate next week and then approaching 0% growth rate week after that.
Since we don't know which scenario we are in (precisely because we cannot know for sure all the mechanisms of transmission and how many need to be cut to approach 0% growth rate), is why, once this situation is reached the risk management conclusion quickly becomes "maybe what we're doing now is enough ... but we can no longer risk being wrong, so we need to do even more social distancing and enforce compliance with the military".
If it was "certain" that growth rate was decreasing to zero, it's unlikely marshal law would be implemented (it is quite a big step for civilian authorities to take).
Yeah, fuck the free market.
Quoting Nobeernolife
In real terms, it's China that's loosing value (production capacity and resources) and is only getting money in return.
Countries that have had the outbreak earlier are good forecasts for later epidemic areas.
Italy with being earliest hit and where the containment of the outbreak was lost (and likely the pandemic spread without notice at first) is the worst case scenario. China with imposing draconian measures and South Korea responding quite well to a serious pandemic are other good forecast. They have not continued exponential on growth. Let's remember that IF the situation in China to be as bad as in Italy would mean that over 114 000 would have died of the virus. It hasn't. If it can hide double or triple the amount of actual deaths, not even a police state like China can repress over 100 000 deaths in our time of internet. Lockdowns do work.
(A bit old stats, but they show the trend in China)
South Korea:
With the US that has only few states implementing a lockdown, but general social distancing has taken effect so I assume that the US forecast is a bit similar to Italy, but less explosive growth than in Italy. Add the inefficiency of the Trump administration, the size of the country and my forecast is that it will still be bad. To be as bad as in Italy it's now, about 25 000 Americans have to die of the pandemic.
Hence if you make forecasts, I'd make the estimate that on some level will the growth stop and start to plateau. When? Well, Italy will be the example. And of course, the only way for Republicans to get into their thick head that one should invest in a global effort to prevent pandemics is that it will be bad, unfortunately.
Still I'll bet that well less than one million in the World will die from the corona-virus.
Yes it does. The question is whether the specific actions taken have been/will be effective, which is difficult to measure in a timely manner. My concern is that the time window for containing the virus in the US before it overwhelms the healthcare system (as we've seen in Europe) will soon close. Because testing has been inadequate, it's not even known how long that time window is.
The hammer and dance approach is that if strong measures are taken now to contain the virus, that can provide time later for understanding the virus better and allows options for further action. That must include clear and consistent messaging that the problem is extremely serious, and being up front about the actions to be taken and the reasons for them. (This seems to be happening now at least at the state level with NY, CA and others, but needs to extend to the federal level as well.)
Conversely, if ineffective measures are taken and the time window closes, then that leaves limited options, limited understanding and potentially millions of deaths.
Quoting ssu
Yes, so compare the consistent messaging (and follow through) in China, South Korea, Japan, etc., with Italy, etc. The US needs to do the same, and quickly.
Fair enough. My concern, though, is that we don't see that in the data right now. And the lack of testing to date in the US means that there may be many more cases out there than anyone realizes.
Quoting Baden
Hopefully so.
Teams of experts could easily be assembled to tell the headless chickens what to do about climate change. What gives one crisis traction and the other none? Covid-19 is not a threat to the vast majority of humans, but the lockdowns affect everyone. Why aren't we this selfless regarding other issues like inequality and climate change?
I think at least part of the answer lies in our myths and fears.
Because everybody understands if a person dies to Covid-19, the reason is the pandemic.
If climate change ruins the Egyptian harvest and the economic recession makes it that the government cannot prevent famine, which then turns into a civil war, how are you going to put the reason for masses of Egyptians killed like in Syria now on climate change? You can't. Can you blame climate policy on the deaths of the next Katrina type hurricane hitting Central America? Nope.
That's the reason.
There is always some time frame in which data fits an exponential growth curve! Or logarithmic. Or linear. Or better yet polynomial - it can be made to fit any curve over any time scale. But no scientist in their right mind would propose an exponential growth model just because you can fit an exponential curve to two consecutive points. This is not how scientific modeling works.
There is no myth for climate change. That's not part of our collective ancestral memory.
You are doing a fantastic job and I can only imagine what anticipating a hurricane can feel like when you are on a surf board in the ocean.
Try to hang as loose as possible when able so you have the power and the endurance to hang on when it comes over you.
We are standing beside you ( socially distant ) but together in our mission.
Thank you for going to work because you love us AND we will stay at home because we love you :hearts:
I think of all the people who don't have a paycheck right now while I do. I hope it moves through quickly.
https://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/league-of-ireland/i-spent-eight-days-in-hospital-hooked-up-to-oxygen-ex-loi-player-lee-duffy-tells-of-covid-19-infection-39065277.html
:sad: Sorry to hear @Michael. Best wishes and hopes for recovery, man. :pray:
This is such a stupid rule. The amount of positives will be vastly underreported >> UK becoming the next coronavirus basketcase. In Ireland, you call a doctor. If your symptoms fit the profile, you get a test.
I know someone of around that age who has/had it and experienced only minor symptoms, the worst being fatigue. Godspeed to you and your mother, friend.
My friend tested me on that a couple of weeks ago:
Out of 20,338 people tested in Britain for covid-19 164 people have the disease. The test itself is 97% accurate. You take the test and it comes back positive. What's the chance you actually have it based on this single test?
Apparently the answer is something like 21%?
Me, I'm philosophical about it - I am able to WFH and am contracted until end April, with the possibility of further work - in a very large house next to a playing field, so if one had to be marooned at home, I can't think of a better place. I'm investigating putting an Intel Stick and webcam on our television so we can use it to teleconference with family living far and wide. I hope everyone is OK and gets through this ordeal. :pray:
Good point. 97% accuracy isn't great.
God I hope this cluster-fuck ends soon..
That order of "You are not allowed to go out for a walk for fresh air" is simply stupid. (Especially when your annoying neighbor with an ugly dog can go.)
The only logical reason would be that Spaniards don't give a damn about regulations and hence it's easier for the police to break up people socializing in the park or whatever. Yet making the rules more draconian that "as people disobey them partly" would be enough is simply doesn't work.
If only...
HEY! My little Quasimodo is NOT ugly!
That's the only one I really don't like as I exercise a lot. Mostly running. But... anyone can just say "Hey, I was just going for a walk", so if you allow that it has the potential to more or less makes a nonsense of the lockdown.
This really goes down to things like the common sense and how people take authorities and orders from the government.
For example, cafes and restaurants haven't been closed here, but they have seen a loss of 90% of their customers. And people do keep the distance when walking. The simple fact is that when you have only 1 death in the country it's hard to issue very draconian regulations. And if the vast majority will obey, is that enough to curb the peak and have the health sector functioning? After all, the reason for the lockdown is to have it effect the people in a longer time period. Time will tell.
No harm no foul. He was just being optimistic. :shade:
No harm no foul for Senator Burr either. Just being optimistic with the public while privately telling his friends there was a disaster coming and selling hundreds of thousands of dollars in hotel and other stocks. Politicians like Trump and Burr just didn't want the good people of America to worry their silly little heads about things while they looked after their own interests. Nothing to see here.
I just read an article on The Atlantic about, correct me if wrong, a stimulus package for Danish to continue work in the private sector for 75 percent in original salary pay for 13 weeks, which would cost quite a lot.
It's a shoddy article, but inspiration is due for such a plan.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/608533/
Actually the US is way down the list in infections per capita. So let's do this, since it's all a game of sorts to you, should the final tally show the US with a lower per capita infection and death rate than The Netherlands, would you be willing to admit to Trump's superiority in handling this crisis to The Netherlands? Or, is it like Trump's age old malaria drug hunch, where we don't need additional proof of what the evidence will be, we already just know?
You must be high. The age old malaria drug, which is chloroquine or Hydroxychloroquine are effective, per reports of South Korea and China...
Assuming you got the prevalence of the disease right, which is the difficult part of the calculation.
If we assume the base chance to have the virus is 0.8 percent, as per your numbers, then out of a thousand people 8 will have the virus. These 8 will test positive (rounded up). But from the remaining 992 another 30 will test positive (3%, rounded up). So if you test positive, your chance of having the virus are 8/38, which is 21%.
Conclusion: for rare diseases, you need very accurate tests.
The main difference is that governments think that they have to act immediately and comprehensively to respond to this threat. If climate change was going to happen in the next six months then they would act to the same degree.
Also there is the image of bodies on morgue tables, which doesn't play well with your electorate.
Yes, there is an innate fear of pandemic, whereas climate change is some distant idea for many people.
There is a consideration which I am sure was in the minds of the experts and politicians, at the point when more severe restrictions where contemplated. Which is that it would be impossible to avoid social and civil collapse in cities and then in the wider area if no action had been taken and there were many thousands of seriously ill people in tents and sports halls. So I think the measures are more to prevent this collapse than to avoid the death of a few million old and vulnerable people.
Such collapse would inevitably result in many more deaths than one would expect from the virus in isolation.
Yes, it's 21%.
However the actual coronavirus tests will have a specificity of 100% if the same as the WHO tests:
Quoting Nature - Coronavirus and the race to distribute reliable diagnostics
Which references this paper:
Quoting Detection of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) by real-time RT-PCR
"According to the Institute of International Finance, total debt reached $253 trillion in late 2019, or the equivalent of 322% of global GDP – the highest it has ever been. Now that large parts of Europe and North America are following China in imposing far-reaching lockdowns, concerns are growing over the viability of this enormous debt pile. In the sharp economic contraction of the next few months, widely expected to become the worst in peacetime history, countless borrowers will struggle to repay their debts. This in turn risks unleashing a major international debt crisis that will make the market crash and global recession of 2008–’09 look like child’s play.
[In '08]...The world’s leading central banks soon joined this effort to preserve the financialised world economy, cutting interest rates to historic lows and pumping the equivalent of over $11 trillion worth of new money into circulation through their quantitative easing (QE) programmes. These dramatic monetary interventions helped stave off a total collapse of the global financial system, but they came at the cost of a fresh wave of speculative investment and a rapid increase in global debt levels, which has left the world economy extremely vulnerable to an unforeseen external shock.
And what a shock we got: a near-complete shutdown of productive and commercial activity in some of the world’s leading economies, combined with a collapse in the oil price followed by a synchronised and virtually instantaneous crash of money and capital markets, which threatened to freeze up international credit and payments systems, amidst concerns over collapsing global supply chains and skyrocketing unemployment levels. If ever there was a perfect storm, this has to be it.
...Unlike the new strain of coronavirus that triggered this medical crisis, however, the mountains of debt that now threaten to sink the global economy are no force of nature: they are man-made, and largely a consequence of the particular ways in which policymakers chose to deal with the last financial crisis."
https://www.tribunemag.co.uk/2020/03/the-coming-debt-deluge
To each other.
What they could do is right down their debts and see how many noughts there are and then agree to cross off some of those noughts.
Problem solved.
I have no sympathy for this Burr guy, but how do get to Trump? Trump separated himself from his business when taking office, and his business IS friggin hotels, which is the sector most hard hit by this.
This TDS really screws with peoples heads.
Yes! You finally get it. If we're interested in a time frame where exponential growth is accurate (or accurate enough for our purposes) it's perfectly valid to say the phenomenon has grown exponentially from A to B points in time.
Such as biologists saying bacteria grow exponentially when there is enough food.
What you don't seem to get is that your criticism of using the term "experiential growth" is the same for all curves (and continuous curves themselves don't "match" any phenomena because all measurement is fundamentally discrete).
If you say "oh, it's not exponential it's logistic" I can say "ahh, it's only logistic until it isn't, what if the virus doesn't behave in a logistic curve due to reinfection, or what if we wait long enough for new generations to be born that aren't immune and the virus re-emerges as a pandemic; see, haha, only logistic until it isn't!! hahaha".
What would your answer be? Logistic is a good curve to approximate infection growth on the time scale we're interested in, of this first wave of infection.
And, by the same logic "exponential" is a good curve to approximate the first phases of an outbreak, as other factors that reduce exponential growth are insignificant on the time scale of the initial outbreak.
Why are we interested in this time-scale? Because that's when the medical system is overwhelmed and governments decide on a policy response to stop the exponential growth that would occur if no action is taken.
Why is exponential a good description? Because the corrective terms and factors on this time scale would make no significant contribution to predicting the initial outbreak, so the equation can just be simplified to an exponential one, and it's useless pedantry to keep terms that simplify to zero.
Quoting SophistiCat
No where did I say we only have two data points, so I don't know where this strawman comes from, but it's not even a correct argument against the strawman you've created!
Scientists fit curves to small amounts of data, even 2 data points, all the time, and then debate which projection is justified based on either the trend in the data (as more data comes in) or proposed mechanisms.
Yes, no scientist would insist it's one projection rather than another without some argument, but fitting different curves to data and then debating what is "overfitting" and what isn't, what is the clear trend in different time frames, what mechanisms might change the trend in different time frames, is basically the second lesson of data analysis (after how to fit curves to data to begin with).
Which is exactly what I'm proposing!
Maybe growth will reduce close to zero soon in Italy, follow such a logistic projection (still not projected "forever" but only a good prediction insofar as quarantine measures are maintained, virus doesn't mutate to be more virulent to defeat quarantine; still only "logistic until it isn't" as you say) where new cases start to approach zero.
Maybe not! Maybe it will follow a projection where growth continues to be some significant percentage of the population, under the previous policy measures, and a exponential curve is a predicts accurately the future states over the time frame we're interested in (corrective terms to the logistic function are insignificant). Maybe the new policy measures, of marshal law, will get it under control ... maybe not!
Now, you can say "oh, well, I still don't like the word exponential here", but I'm just using the terminology epidemiologists and biologists use; you asked for a source, I provided you a citation of such language under the heading "exponential growth" in wikipedia. Why do scientists talk like this? Because the same kind of criticism can be brought in for everything, you could walk into any math class explaining exponential growth in terms of interest payments "gotcha! exponential interest growth is impossible because eventually no ledger could keep track of the numbers, so it's really an exponential added to a step function that reduces growth to zero when the entire accessible universe has been filled up tracking this number; why is this a foolish criticism? Because that time-frame is of no interest to the phenomena being discussed".
Why this is relevant (that we don't know yet what projection will actually be true; and we don't know which policy measure contributed exactly what amount in controlling the virus) is because it informs risk analysis.
A lot of people assumed Wuhan was a "worst case scenario" and that therefore Italy will follow a projection similar to Wuhan ("Italy is X weeks behind Wuhan" is a phrase that would pop up) essentially implying that Wuhan presented a upper-bound on "how bad it can be". However, Italy has now broken with the Wuhan pattern (of leveling off in growth about now). This could be due to the Wuhan scenario being mostly fraudulent numbers by the Chinese, or it could be that Italy didn't do a good enough policy response or, even with a similar policy response, conditions are more favourable to the virus in Italy or it has mutated to be more virulent (lack of adequate protection of health care workers creates the conditions of evolutionary pressure for the virus to become more virulent).
So Italy is now becoming the new worst case scenario.
Other places with an even later or even weaker, or both, response can make an even worse case scenario compared to Italy.
For specificity testing, you don't need a better comparative test because you use known negative samples that demonstrate that your test doesn't give false positives.
There are caveats on that, but that's the essence. You're looking at the gold standard test. The test will only be positive when the virus signature is detected.
Quoting Michael
Right.
That happened with swineflu epidemic of 2009. Report from 2013, four years later:
Quoting Michael
Quoting Baden
These observations are correct on an individual level.
The reason for mass testing is systemic. Even ignoring how to increase the accuracy of the tests (multiple tests etc. which could even be counter productive, see below); having more positives than what's expected from false-positives is going to inform that community transmission is happening in the region, first of all and some policy response is needed (obviously, we'd want to save tests until community spread, and so it's more random sampling than mass testing in this "mode").
Second, some of the positives are going to be true-positives, but even if these are 20% of all positives (true and false positives), you can still just quarantine all positives anyways. Since the course of action of asymptomatics is to just self-isolate until there are symptoms, there's not really much cost to the false-positive (to society).
Furthermore, if society is going into lockdown anyways, then asymptomatic false positives just end up with "more motivation" to lockdown. So it actually makes the situation marginally better with some percentage trying to "super lockdown", thinking they have the virus even if they don't (mind trip, both not harmful to society).
Of course, false-negatives create the exact opposite behaviour, so the above benefits only arise if the chance of false-negatives are significantly lower than false-positives.
So, mass testing can still have a systemic policy effect even if results of positive tests are not used as a basis of diagnosis; diagnosis could be based on symptoms if and when they develop.
By diagnosing based on symptoms rather than serial testing the positives to identify the fasle-positives, this makes more tests available for the mass-testing policy. More mass testing without diagnosis can be more effective use of tests than trying to diagnose (to separate true-positives from false-positives through more testing, which if chances were only 20% for the first test a second test may still be inadequate to be highly confident).
In otherwords, there's the Bayesian statistics for the case of the individual, but also Bayesian statistics for policy. Mass testing will give better information on the sate of the outbreak than no mass testing, even if each individual positive is only marginally more informed. Isolative measures of all positives, both true and false, is going to significantly slow the spread of the virus even without diagnosing anyone until they have symptoms, as well as inform and track the effectiveness of policy measures sooner than the ultimate evidence of deaths.
Indeed, considering all this, the argument can be made that testing symptomatics "who want to know" is less informative (as the outbreak progresses there's less and less chance it's going to be something else) than mass testing to find asymptomatics in a large net that catches both true and false positives.
Not really. As long as we wish to continue with this admittedly profoundly offensive game analogy, the rules of victory can be defined however we wish, meaning we can agree to look at data on any decided upon date, perhaps when there is a declaration the pandemic has ended. It also stands to reason that the initial error rates in assigning causes of death by nation should be roughly the same, but, of course, maybe not.
But, as a word of clarification, the origin of this game analogy came from @Benkei's post where he referenced the US infection rate as being now competitive in the coranavirus Olympics, something I choose to take literally in making my point, or not, that nobody thinks this as a game, Even if one believes the US response under Trump is inept, the response I'd think should be sympathetic as opposed to ridiculing.
Isn't an inept response by definition ridiculous, and deserving of ridicule? How is society going to learn without signals such as ridiculing the inept?
I though we wanted to debate what's true and what's false. The important proposition being "is Trump inept or not"; which, if factual, clearly far outweighs in terms of merit for discussion people's feelings about "strong language" that points in the direction of Trump's ineptness.
So, what's with the feelings police?
And, if you want to play feelings police, why aren't you criticizing Trump and his followers for making light of the situation before? Shouldn't you at least preamble your criticism of with "Yes, Trump and a lot of his followers weren't really sympathetic to the idea this pandemic is a problem nor with the people who died 'due to something no worse than the flu', and ridiculing people on the left who were concerned about it, and not simply in the form of words, but taking actions designed to spread the disease faster in order to virtue signal their lack of sympathy for those that disagreed with Trump's message it was a hoax and will go away or is in any case no worse than the flu and plenty of people work through it and get better; and so not only hurt feelings but have and will cause many deaths", then, having recognized this and the hypocrisy of Trump and his followers having "hurt feelings" now with regard to criticism of Trump's inept handling of the crisis (assuming it's inept as you say), go on to make your point that analogies should be carefully selected to not hurt anyone's feelings, and not just actual people with hurt feelings about the analogy but also people who aren't themselves really hurt by it, but can understand the point being made, but nevertheless could imagine someone else, who isn't here, who could maybe be hurt by it, if they were here.
Seriously speaking, this macabre example does tell us something:
There is a genuine incentive not to be open with the numbers of infected and especially with the deaths.
The less you test, the less dire the situation looks and if deaths aren't piling up and the health system isn't overwhelmed, things look better! And far easier simply for the officials say that this old person perished to the common flu. Or simply not to report them. Iran is the best example of this where nobody thinks that the official statistics are anywhere close to the real ones. And just how many died we may not know.
Then of course is the question just when you stop counting? If corona-virus isn't just for a year with us, but for longer time. Viruses like the Ebola are so deadly that they usually kill themselves quickly, but this covid-19 might stay far longer or simply mutate to be covid-21 or covid-29.
Quoting Benkei
Trump is not responsible for the caseload in the US. Stop being a retard.
So you're going to continue being a retard. Fine.
[I]Summary of the article: Strong coronavirus measures today should only last a few weeks, there shouldn’t be a big peak of infections afterwards, and it can all be done for a reasonable cost to society, saving millions of lives along the way. If we don’t take these measures, tens of millions will be infected, many will die, along with anybody else that requires intensive care, because the healthcare system will have collapsed.[/i]
What should his administration have done differently?
Sick and evil stuff. But schadenfreude has been the going rate among this species of dogma for quite some time now, long before the pandemic began. We've come to the point that only a complete and utter disaster can make them feel better about being wrong and making false predictions all these years.
It is really difficult to write opinions without inventive name-calling, isn`t it? Ever considered that is not only not an argument, but also counterproductive?
This coming from you of all people. :lol:
Yeah, I have been talking about TDS, which I see as real medical situation. (Scott Adams says the same.) That is not meant as name-calling, but I can see that some take it as such. However, I always try to stay away from calling people things like "libtards", matching Benkei`s level of communication. No?
Yeah, and guess what... nobody screams about "racism" because we call it the Spanish flue.
But it is not a real medical situation and you know it. And who cares what Scott Adams says? Is he your authority? What it is, is your go-to rebuttal for every occasion. How helpful and convenient that anyone who has a different point of view is rendered unable to think on your level because they are sick. Do you imagine that every time you type that someone is going to thank you for the diagnosis and run to the doctor. No you don't. You type it because it makes you feel better. Safe and secure that you don't have to think. Why are you even here? Are you angry? Scared?
So you and a cartoonist making a medical diagnosis. Is this somehow productive? If you believe it is then kindly present a reasonable argument to support this belief.
No I don´t know that at all. This kind of mass hysteria really looks like a medical situation; this is actually something that happens to humans easily. And Scott Adams gives extremely good insights, I have been following him for a while find him spot on again and again. You might want to check him out.
Quoting Monitor
Err, no, that was not was I am saying. Don´t fall into Cathy Newman mode here...
Well, Adams is also a trained hypnotist and looks at the human situation from that point. I am following him because he is insightful and has an incredibly good track record. Of course, if all you know about him is that he is a "cartoonist", then you would not know.
Anyway, I did agree that TDS can be misunderstood as personal name-calling, But surely you agree that it is not on the same level as "Trumpanzees" or "Orange-Otan".
The entire point of TDS is an attempt to invalidate opposing views. Even you must realize this on some level.
Well, if the "opposing view" is so predictable, emotional, repetitive, and consisting mostly of slogans, and is met with name-calling instead of explanations, it is really hard to take it other than as a condition. For which TDS is a good description.
Of course, there are rational critics of Trump (Scott Adams is one), but they argue completely differently.
A cartoonist AND hypnotist. He’s definitely managed to influence you on a deep level (below the intellect).
Quoting Nobeernolife
You were politely asked to present an argument showing how it’s productive to use this term. Or perhaps you don’t actually care about productivity and good argumentation. :chin:
Whether I'm hypocrite or snowflake notwithstanding, the point is that there is a consistent disdain for Trump that goes beyond rationality, even to the point of hoping for his failure despite who may suffer in his path. The truth is that the US has controlled the virus as well as any other nation so far and hasn't shown any greater ineptitude than the others. There's also the lingering question about the malaria drug, which might show greater promise than expected and that would not have gotten as much traction as it did without Trump.
It is descriptive, not productive. Do you think terms like Trumpanzees and OrangeOtan are either?
I wouldn't preamble my criticism that way because I don't talk in single sentences that take up half a page. But, to the position that my criticism of others would have been better received had I acknowledged my hypocrisy and then recited a long long winded self excoriation, I'd just ask that you pretend that happened. Now that we're working under the assumption I followed your directions, will you now acknowledge that my post was fully correct in substance, or were your above comments just an irrelevant chastisement? My guess is that it's the latter.
South Korea took an extremely aggressive approach, Japan still has no curfew, no official limit on public gatherings, no pub closures, no testing at the airport, no mass checks like Korea. What Japan does have is controlled borders, a travel stop from China (at the same time as the US, as far as I remember), and cancellation of official events. And a very cohesive culture with high hygiene and little unnecessary touching. And a very low Corona rate.
I think you are cherry-picking from a complex broad situation, trying to find snippets that fit into a "blame Trump" narrative.
Yes, of course it’s not. At least you’re able to admit that. Good, the first step to addressing a problem is knowing of its existence.
Yep. It is obvious, but once you call it TDS, you get blamed for name calling, you Trumpanzee....
Again, if you think I'm hoping for that, you haven't been reading my posts. I'm warning you and I have been warning you and Tiff since before Trump was elected, that the man is a danger. That it requires something like a pandemic to make people acutely aware of that fact is a tragedy. The malaria drug has had hastily (and therefore badly executed) phase 1 testing in other countries well before Trump picked up in it. I already posted about it on February 18th (the effect of chloroquine was already indicated in labs in 2004).
About 75% of drugs that pass phase 1 are ultimately not brought to market because they are not safe enough. So we can hope, but on the basis of what we know about drug development it would be pure luck if (hydro)chloroquine is indeed the solution.
Well, according to Matt Groening you're wrong and Trump really is a dick. I dunno. Who to believe??
Is the choice really between orangeutan and saviour of the world? No nuanced opinions allowed any more? This tribe mentality really is the problem today. If you do not join one tribe, the members automatically assume you belong to the other. Not a good basis for communication....
This. We need to hammer the virus and control it before it hammers us. Then we will have more time and options for dealing with it.
I would encourage people to sign the petition to get this idea to the White House as soon as possible. 75,000 more signatures required.
You accuse everyone here who criticizes Trump of having TDS. That's not nuance. That's slavish devotion. If you think you are being nuanced, God help you. But whatever, probably better done on the Trump thread.
If you just want to isolate the epidemiological failures from the broader economic ones like funding healthcare and universal healthcare access; the quicker responses like quarantine and non-essential for society's basic functioning business closures are adopted, and the quicker travel is restricted, the lower the ultimate effected number of the population is expected to peak, and the slower it is expected to spread. The USA administration has failed to act or acted too slowly on all of these measures.
It's not just Trump, the UK fucked up royally (hur hur) too.
You're saying that prior to closing its borders, the US should have been checking temperatures. Can you think of anything else that would have changed the present caseload?
The caseload we have now isn't undo-able. Most of the country is still ramping up, putting triage tents up in front of emergency rooms, preparing to wash disposable masks (oh my fucking god), marking off blocks of hospitals for covid-19 (I work in a massive regional referral center).
We actually had time to screw around and fuck up. We're an ocean away from you guys.
Sure. But that's just politics. It's not exactly conductive of rationality. People are emotional. People want their political enemies to fail, sometimes people want them to fail so badly they'll accept hurting their own interests. None of this is either new or surprising. Trump certainly elicits particularly strong feelings. He's good at making people angry. And rather proud of it, too.
Quoting Hanover
I'd call that more of a guess than "the truth". But you have a point in that there really isn't any indication, as per the numbers, that the US is doing especially badly.
I'd argue that a community should wait until the virus is present to start shutting down businesses. The goal is not the stop the spread, it's to slow it down. If you close businesses before the virus is there, you aren't slowing anything down. You're just hurting the economy.
The US administration has known of the great risk of the virus spreading to its shores since at least mid February, received briefing on what the response should be to mitigate the pandemic, especially widespread testing for the disease, and waited a month to take minimal preventative measures. While administration members were happy to use the information for insider trading.
Most European countries have been taking preventative measures for about a month. Schools started to close in the last few days in the US. Responding to a pandemic; if you wait for the first confirmed case in an area to do literally anything, you're already way too late.
You're a healthcare worker right? Surely you know this.
No, I critize the automatic, emotional, content-less, kneejerk criticism of OrangeOtan as TDS. I critize Trump myself when I think is wrong. That not "slavish devotion".
Take your BS to the Trump thread like I said.
Also this:
And this:
The virus spreads before you know it's there. If you know it's going to make its presence felt (say, within a couple of weeks), you know it's already there. And you need to hit it then to slow down the spread.
There have been very different reactions in European countries, based on different philosophies. As late as Feb 1, they had a "Hug a Chinese" day in Florence, to make sure not to be accused of "racism":
https://pluralist.com/hug-a-chinese-florence-coronavirus/
I think the US has closed its borders now. What timeframe are you talking about?
Quoting fdrake
Schools just closed because it just got here. We've been planning since we learned from Italy that this virus is not what we were expecting it to be.
"80% of cases are mild-moderate but the symptoms are still severe. Anything short of needing oxygen to survive is in this category."
That's true if you have comprehensive testing and tracing in place. If a state waits until they're treating sick people to get serious, they're already up to two weeks behind the virus spread and with no knowledge of where exactly it is.
You don't say, "I'll wait for my bed to catch on fire before I get up and do something about it."
My point was that closing businesses should not be done in excess of what's absolutely necessary to slow the spread. We want it to spread. We need people to get it and recover from it. Until we have either a cure or a vaccine, people developing immunity to it is our only way of protecting the vulnerable.
I know this is a tricky thing to grasp.
Herd immunity is one way to approach it. But only if the spread is manageable, i.e. less than 1:1. Then, yes, we potentially get better overall immunity and buy time like you said. But you need to hammer it first to get to that stage as per "The hammer and the dance" article that @Andrew M put up. So, initially the idea is to smash it with extreme social distancing and quarantining measures, and yes, shutting everything down. And then gradually lay off until you're at a low level that's controllable. Short term economic hurt for long-term economic sustainability.
Do you think it is possible that a “second wave” may hit? that after all the huddling indoors, bailouts and lockdowns, that it may have been all for nothing?
Just read the article, dude. This is actually all explained.
This is not tricky, you are simply flat out wrong.
People developing immunity through getting the disease is how you maximize the chance vulnerable people will also get it. If it's too late to contain the virus, then slowing down the spread is the only way to make it manageable for vulnerable people, and healthy people where the disease takes a bad turn, to get medical care. Slowing down also buys more time for health systems to prepare and for treatments to be worked on.
I see just posted the point about the spread needing to be manageable, as I say above, but this is not reaching herd immunity as a way of protecting the vulnerable; herd immunity is just the outcome of any endemic process regardless of how it's managed.
This is also useful:
:up:
I agree. That's pretty much what we're doing.
I think overestimate how easy it is to introduce "comprehensive testing and tracing". Especially if you are in a free society and not in Communist China.
Afaik, there is no European county that has duplicated the very fast and radical reactions of the governments of Taiwan, Korean, and Singapore. (And mainland China of course, but their reaction came after 2 months of denial, suppression of news, and outright lies).
Sorry man, I can't deal with you. You make no sense.
If it mutates, yes.
Fine, but say that to the TDS crowd too, please.
I don't think you two are as far away from each other as you think. The phrase "herd immunity" has different connotations, some political, some medical.
The argument is the timing. That lot's of policy measures were available before.
It's like you have a bucket of water to put out a camp fire; you're too lazy and don't bother; you cause a forest fire and then go throw the bucket on the forest fire and say "see, I did".
Timing matters. In an a process that grows exponentially, timing matters a lot.
Sorry, which article? I was interested in Frank’s opinion.
I'd like to see everyone who wants to just rip the shit out of the other political side doing it on the Trump thread. That's what it's there for. And keep this thread for more nuanced ( :cheer: ) critiques.
US: confirmed 8 tested cases of coronavirus first of February. confirmed 11 3 days later.
Source: Kaggle's dataset, aggregated from global records.
It's not "just got there", other countries have responded far, far better within similar timeframes.
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
Not suggesting you don't listen to @frank either.
Benkei was saying that Trump is responsible for the present caseload in the US. That's wrong.
I'm not sure what fdrake was saying.
I agree with you that "herd immunity" became a political thing in the UK. Maybe they thought we could deal with this virus the way we did H1N1. Turns out we can't. I think we all know that now.
:up:
I'm not interested in continuing this.
Sorry again, but that guy really has no authority to speak on such matters.
I don't blame you. Most people lose interest when arguments involve processing spreadsheets.
This is just basic common sense.
If your strategy of getting herd immunity of a disease is everybody actually getting that disease, you're going to maximize chances of vulnerable people getting that disease.
You can protect vulnerable people either by containing the disease, which doesn't provoke herd immunity, or then creating some artificial way of creating immunity that is not actually getting the disease, and so can't expose vulnerable people to the actual disease because the now immune person didn't actually get the disease.
Herd immunity from getting the actual disease happens in 2 parts:
1. People getting the disease and their immune system learning to deal with it and becoming immune.
2. People getting the disease and dying from it and no longer being part of the herd.
There is no way to have 1 without 2. This is why an epidemiologists thought this idea was satire when he first heard about it.
Quoting William Hanage, epidemiologist
If we accept the pandemic cannot be contained, then herd immunity is just the inevitable result of the pandemic playing out, but the build up herd immunity from people getting the disease does not protect the vulnerable from also getting it, as for the time you have the disease you are able to transmit it to vulnerable people, that how the disease spreads.
Man dies after self-medicating with chloroquine
Be careful.
I feel my TDS coming on, but I'll refrain. Another good illustration of why everything certain politicians say about coronavirus should be ignored.
I miss the days where I was just worried about Brexit.
I think you can, and I think that is what the countries who follow this approach are trying achieve. If there are enough immune people in the herd, the virus will not find enough new targets to spread and fizzle out by itself. The problem is that to keep those who would die from the virus (the sick and elderly) separated, while the virus burns through the herd.
About time.
No country is trying to follow this. It would be insane.
No, you're just engaging in fantasy science.
If people are getting the disease they can transmit it to vulnerable people while they have the disease.
Fully isolating the vulnerable, which was sort of pseudo plan for propaganda purposes, is simply not practically possible.
The best that can be done is containing as long as possible, such as stopping flights as I was advocating when I joined this thread, and then slowing the spread so that the medical system is not overwhelmed. This results in many vulnerable people dying, but at least not more than necessary. With an overloaded medical system, lot's of healthy people die as well from lack of care, from the virus and other things.
Have you considered that that is precisely the reason why the medical advisor (forgot his name now), was downplaying Trumps optimistic statement? Image the frenzy, where suddenly everybody thinks there is a magic cure, and some people who want the stuff have guns.
It seems the stuff works, but clearly it needs to be used very carefully, and also there are probably supply problems.
I hate to be repeating myself, but what I described is PRECISELY the approach that every virologist who wants to achieve herd immunity prescribes. Clearly, you can not isolate the complete herd (someone has to get your groceries), and on the other side, clearly you do not want the vulnerable to get infected.
No, you are simply wrong and have not bothered to inform yourself of the basic science of what's going on.
The mechanism of protecting the vulnerable is by slowing the spread of the virus to within the medical system's ability to handle it, so that vulnerable people will get adequate care as well as healthy people.
You can try to isolate vulnerable people even more as part of that social distancing policy, but the process of reaching "herd immunity" is going to expose large amounts of vulnerable people to the disease. There's no practical way to isolate them for the entire duration of the pandemic.
Herd immunity is just the end result of everyone getting the disease and recovering or dying, it is not some sort of tactic that can be achieved and then, because there is herd immunity, vulnerable people are now protected.
Now, if you want to change your position to "yes, yes, the heard immunity thing is just social distancing; it's just bad PR to call it a plan to develop herd immunity by people getting the actual disease, rather than just the outcome of people getting the disease, which we obviously want to be a manageable process" then you are on your way to understand why Trump acted too late to have a better path than what is playing out in the US currently.
There is not some sort of bizarre theory and counter intuitive strategy where herd immunity can be "achieved quickly" and that's why actions were late and it's not a problem if even the late actions were completely bungled, like the tests.
Yes, by acting too late and incoherently, Trump put the US on a path to herd immunity sooner rather than later. No, doing so is not clever: the process of that happening quickly and out of control is what many virologists spend their entire lives studying and putting together plans and protocols to avoid happening - advice condensed into various briefings that went ignored.
“I've always known this is a real, this is a pandemic. I've felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”
Trump on 18 March :
The coronavirus "snuck up on us,” adding that it is “a very unforeseen thing.”
Which one is it?
Oh wait, they're both bullshit.
Why write an excoriation, why not just acknowledge the hypocrisy and reconsider your world view? Unless your goal is to be a hypocrite: in which case, mission accomplished.
Quoting Hanover
As I mention in my rebuttal, I see no evidence of the people you think will actually have hurt feelings from @Benkei's analogy. If there is no such person, I don't see what the substance could be. Even if there was such a person, I don't see why I'd accept it is was "hurtful language"; I'd still have to be convinced.
It isn't easy, but South Korea (and others) have done it. The problem in the US was that the testing got off to a bad start (the US CDC's early tests were flawed). And the pandemic was not taken seriously by the administration until very recently.
Quoting Nobeernolife
All correct. But the point is that there are only two options available to avoid unnecessary death and social upheaval. That is to comprehensively test and contact trace. Or to completely lockdown until the virus is under control. So the time window has passed in the US for the first option, which leaves only the second option. Once the virus is under control, then the first option becomes available again. That's where China, South Korea, etc., are at now, and so the lockdown measures in place there can begin to be relaxed.
Edit: If you look at Chart 13b - NPI Measures Per Country, you'll see that South Korea had very few travel bans and closures. That's because they were ahead of the virus in their testing and contact tracing.
You can find endorsements of Pueyo's two articles by infectious disease experts and public intellectuals here:
https://medium.com/tomas-pueyo/coronavirus-articles-endorsements-fdc68614f8e3
Note that it is the argument for the hammer and the dance that is essential here. Pueyo just happens to be the guy that has communicated it best.
Plus his data is all sourced. He's just giving the most clear and sensible interpretation.
Yep.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/23/kiwis-go-home-new-zealand-to-go-into-month-long-lockdown-to-fight-coronavirus
“The worst-case scenario is simply intolerable, it would represent the greatest loss of New Zealanders’ lives in our history and I will not take that chance.”
:strong:
A fine article. I noted one example that he gave, which was surprising:
Sounds incredible that China can put 9 000 people to track infected persons, but I believe it. When you just think that nearly all dangerous epidemics and pandemics have come from China, perhaps they really have had training, they have learned something and have an incentive to do something about this... especially as the country has become wealthy.
Early January he was tested but without a COVID 19 test they ruled it as Influenza B but I doubt it was sent onto the CDC.
We have talked about herd immunity and if he did have it the other 14 students in his program got it.
I don't want him to be tested now because I am nervous about what they will want from him. 14 twenty something kids with herd immunity and do not do drugs or drink?
Worthy of studying for donors?
Are you keeping track? :razz:
With strong bipartisan support as well.
Quoting ssu
I think that is right. From Pueyo's earlier article:
Quoting Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now
They built a huge hospital in ten days. They staffed a ward with robots. They are way ahead of the game.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2236777-coronavirus-hospital-ward-staffed-entirely-by-robots-opens-in-china/
What? Who sold you this rubbish and why do you think this is true? H1N1 ('swine flu') was North and Central American. Zika was Brazillian. Ebola was North/West African. BSE ('mad cow') was UK. H5NX (bird flu variants) was largely of American and European providence. MERS ('camel flu') was largely Arabian. SARS, I grant, had its origin in China.
Yes, except they didn't say only if your work is essential. But only if the nature of your work means you can't work at home.
Yes, bring back the proroguing of parliament, those were the days.
Also, their people are sensible and do the right thing when asked.
But I doubt they have in anyway defeated the virus, only managed to control it. Let's see how it fights back when they try to go back to business as usual.
Good on them, I almost moved there a couple of years ago, love the place. I just couldn't get used to all the rugby and beer, no antiques and the lack of culture.
...and South Koreas death rate is 8 times higher than Japan, that has not done it. So that proves what?
You believe news emanating from the CCP??
We depend on you to tell us what to believe in. Or Scott
Adams.
I think that the conversation moved on from here overnight. I can't think of another social scourge which has an equivalence to the pandemic. Simply because the pandemic is an exponential threat, so a stitch in time saves nine.
This is true (well, I cannot verify that particular case, but the response has been huge). And this is the reason why we shouldn't be calm that China with it's huge population has had officially just few thousand cases.
Quoting StreetlightX
Start with the Black Death. Plus the "Asian flu" Influenza A H2N2 of 1956-1958, the Hong Kong flu (even if back then it was British). Yes, epidemics and pandemics emerge from various places, but the history of having to tackle these diseases are the reason why China has had to take for example zoonotic diseases far more seriously than for example Italy.
The intention was to say that they (the Chinese) have had to deal with these outbreaks and they have the resources to do that, hence they were more prepared than other countries.
Do not waste my time with stupid comments like that. Next time I'll presume you're trolling.
The deaths are due primarily to a spike in late February after a "superspreader" (patient 31) infected 43 people and the virus rapidly spread. The daily confirmed case count peaked three weeks later and has been dropping ever since - that's the evidence that comprehensive test-and-trace can work without needing lockdowns. See the timeline chart for details.
The Koreans I spoke too had voluntarily locked down because they were so scared. So, there's that too.
Probably not a good idea for Trump to start easing restrictions.
Yes, definitely. I'm mainly thinking of the stringent travel bans and closures which are the most expensive measures.
If you don't watch this and you still think you can discuss CV, you disqualify yourself from discussing CV. Basically on the continuity of the 2008 crisis with the current one, and how Trump may well stymie the last available mechanism for economic revival out of sheer ineptitude.
@fdrake
I'm giving it three days.
Quoting Michael
The spread of the virus must be brought under control first - the alternative is many unnecessary deaths.
Until we can start testing communities we won't know where herd immunity exists. If we can ID those people, we can send them to our front lines of needs.
The idea that the reaction will be worse than the disease is becoming more and more likely.
Children are largely unlikely to be affected by the disease itself but we are going to hand them an economy that we’ve ruined. No amount of technocratic number-crunching and chart-viewing can avoid that.
I don’t have an answer.
I dont think it is Trump alone who decides that on a whim. You can be pretty sure he has expert virologists who are looking at the situation and know more about it than you or I.
Do you?
There’s my answer.
Barbarism? The impotent notion that questioning the authoritarian responses of governments is tantamount to wanting people dead is utter nonsense.
Herd immunity can be created by just having the virus spread through communities, which is what we're doing.
We'll see.
That seems counterproductive. Herd immunity is a protection against spread. We want herd immunity to stop the disease from spreading.
A vaccine creates immunity by subjecting a person to parts of the virus. This stimulates an immune response, so when the person is exposed to the real virus, the immune system doesn't have to ramp up. It's ready to deploy. This is exactly the state of a person who's already had the virus.
We want the disease to spread so that we get herd immunity. Once we have that, vulnerable people will be less likely to get it because there are fewer active infections near them.
The U.K.’s Coronavirus ‘Herd Immunity’ Debacle
Disturbing, however, perhaps he paints a dire landscape in order to garner support for Diem25?
Because fuck old and sick people lol.
Shove it up your ass you fucking retard.
82 000 has already passed in reality.
I imagine that progressive green new deals may start looking more reasonable to conservatives in the near future.
Nah.
The Global recession is already here, just like the pandemic. And your economy isn't ruined. It would be ruined if Russia fired all it's nukes at the US, but in reality those soviet nuclear warheads have only given you electricity to your cities. Besides, after a downturn, then there's a great opportunity for economic growth!
Trump doesn't understand it, but NOW the crash and dire economic situation is not going to be blamed on him. He won't have Joe Biden saying like Clinton to Bush "It's the economy, stupid!" Any idiot will understand that this recession has happened because we still put human life before money.
One can dream.
It's a dangerous lie that it is only corporations panicking about "bottom lines". Many of us are without work, and if this continues much longer, will be unable to pay bills and rent.
The theory of "social distancing" and forced lockdowns on a mass scale is now being forced upon us by governments. According to the WHO, even with small-scale social distancing, "the benefit has to be weighed against the cost of disruption".
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/managing-epidemics-interactive.pdf
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub4/full
Is it so hard to keep the orangemanbad rants on the Trump thread and out of the Corona thread?
Err... and why exactly? Corona was created in China and not by Trump. And this is the Corona thread not the Trump thread.
This is embarrassingly wrong. The main document you are quoting is specifically about influenza not coronavirus.
Here's some official advice about coronavirus, you know, the pandemic that we are actually fighting.
"Necessary measures to mitigate the impact of the pandemic
Given the current epidemiology and risk assessment, and the expected developments in the next days to few weeks, the following public health measures to mitigate the impact of the pandemic are necessary in EU/EEA countries:
Social distancing measures should be implemented early in order to mitigate the impact of the epidemic and to delay the epidemic peak. This can interrupt human-to-human transmission chains, prevent further spread, reduce the intensity of the epidemic and slow down the increase in cases, while allowing healthcare systems to prepare and cope with an increased influx of patients.
Such measures should include:
... Community engagement and acceptance of stringent social distancing measures put in place are key in delaying and reducing further spread."
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/rapid-risk-assessment-novel-coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-pandemic-increased
We're also past the containment stage and onto the mitigation stage you poor uninformed person. Go research the difference.
Please do not post again until you know what you are talking about. Make an effort. At a minimum make sure you post about the right disease. Thanks.
Apparently. He's a Satanic figure: the cause of all evil.
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public
"Maintain social distancing"
South Korea didn’t need to put their economy on hold and to enact draconian measures.
Both are contagious viruses that cause respiratory illness.
So what? Write about the right disease. Is it clear?
I’m writing about the containment measures for epidemics.
I'm not going to tell you again. Next time I'll presume it's deliberate misinformation instead of a stupid mistake.
We're in a pandemic, silly. And recommendations are different for different diseases. Why do I have to explain this to you?
I’ll delete the information, but only because I pity censors.
I don't care what you do, just write about the correct disease. Pfft, it's like kindergarten here sometimes.
You do care, obviously, and I will abide by your authority.
:ok:
Not sure ssu was ranting, but on the general point I agree. Things are getting mixed up between threads and the same stuff is being written in different places. The place for full on anti-Trump rage is the Trump thread. Same for TDS rebuttals. However, that's just advisory. Usual flaming rules apply.
I did forget to mention Trump’s failure to repeal and replace the ACA. Not to worry though, if he’s reelected they’re on track to make healthcare insurance unaffordable to tens of millions of Americans, just like it was in the good old days before Obama.
Back to topic. :grimace:
Oh right. Obama made healthcare affordable by passing an "affordable healthcare act". Gee, how brilliant! I suggest then than Trump signs a "Cure Corona Act", and the Corona will be gone. Maybe after that an "Eternal health and wealth for all forever" act, and everybody will live forever.
I just love simple minds. Would you like buy a used car from me?
Can we work with that?
Perhaps I'll clear myself.
1) Policy decisions taken by countries do effect the spread of the pandemic. Hence the what policies Trump or the Federal State implements has an effect, even if there are the States and their governors making decisions also. Hence policy has to be noticed in this thread also.
2) The President is worried about the economic recession and wants to loosen the "lock down".
3) My argument was that this isn't rational as loosening the precautions will worsen the epidemic and the emphasis should be now on stopping the spread of the virus too quickly. Besides, everybody will understand that this present economic downturn happened because of the pandemic.
Totally wrong. South Korea is in recession:
And it likely goes into longer recession when the Global economy tanks.
Secondly, because they simply were successful in contain the spread of the virus. They did a lot of testing. They could trace down the infections and apply proper quarantine. Yet they did have "Patient 31", who went on to spread the virus around.
And why was that testing so successful?
The US isn't anywhere there anymore. It's in all states already. Now it's only to curb the spike in infections so that the health care system won't collapse. That's why the lockdown.
Frankly, it sounds like you’re in a greater need for stability than we are. I suggest you try to find it in whatever way works best for you.
Thank you for the reflection as I might very well be looking to my circle of thinkers for stability. It is a by product of loving people.
Perhaps so, but note that there are presently no approved immunity tests for covid-19. They will take time to develop and validate.
In the meantime, the community priority must be to suppress the virus before millions of people die. The window is closing.
Yes it has.
But I am a firm believer in the right to try and that has to be made available to those who want to try a test that might still be in trial. The fact that there is community spread suggests that herd immunity might be measurable.
Quoting Andrew M
I realize that the suppression is necessary to flatten the curve but we could be protecting our first responders with antibodies from people who have been infected and have recovered, no?
If that is the case, I suggest that females might have a higher rate of immunity because there is science out there that fetus blood cells remain in the mother's body for up to 15 yrs. So in the event of an emergency within the mother's body, the youngest cells to respond are as old as her last child, follow me? The second set of cells to respond are the older sibling if they have more than one child and finally mom's own cells arrive to the injury site. This happens even if the fetus is not carried to term.
There is something in that line of thinking that might help us if we can figure out why the increase in male over female.
Thoughts?
Coronavirus: Spanish army finds care home residents 'dead and abandoned'
That is childish thinking. Without an economy, everybody dies. Key economic sectors have to function (just to provide food and basic services), and the industries that can be shut down for a while need to restart at some point.
I was just watching the debate in the German parliament where they are going to pass a comprehensive Corona emergency packet, and even the far out opposition parties (both left and right) agree that the restrictions on movement and the government support that is planned can only be maintained for a limited time. A government is not some sort of god.
Trump is completely correct in saying that the cure must be worse than the disease, In a world without derangement syndrome, that would just be a common sense statement.
Which is totally crazy. Economic recession isn't the same as an all out nuclear strike in the US. Recession is a time when wealth changes hands and people are unemployed. And economic growth starts when everybody is all doom and gloom.
Quoting Nobeernolife
Yes. That is the general consensus. Here it was for a month, not a year. Some talk of two months. Nobody is talking of a year or two long lockdown.
Quoting Nobeernolife
YES YES YES!!!!!
My forecast on another thread was proven right!
It took only 9 hours! :lol:
Agreed. :up:
It’s not wrong. South Korea didn’t need to put their economy on hold and to enact draconian measures.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/coronavirus-cases-have-dropped-sharply-south-korea-whats-secret-its-success
I still think it’s too early to say, but so far they have done the right thing and they didn’t need to suspend civil liberties and tank their economy in order to do so. The recession is because of “supply shock”, due to Chinese lockdowns and the like.
It is too late for that in the US. The CDC and FDA have royalty screwed our chances at early testing.
:100:
The abstract from the working paper referred to in that article:
Quoting The Macroeconomics of Epidemics - Eichenbaum, Rebeloz, Trabandt
From the introduction:
NOS4A2,
Have you picked up what people have said about the strategy of how to prevent pandemics?
Step 1) Nip them in the bud: Prevent local epidemics of new zoonotic diseases from being a threat by containing them where they emerge. That might be China, Africa or heck, just rural Arizona or Montana. That's the preventing stuff that CDC does in foreign countries, which Republicans hate.
Step 2) Trace the path and quarantine: In this case every new infection can be traced where it was gotten and all individual persons can quarantined. In this level nobody infected cannot simply walk into the hospital and there is no clue where the person got it. If this happens, then step 3.
Step 3) Containment & curbing the peak:: The epidemic/pandemic is here. You cannot anymore try to solve the path of the epidemic and contain individuals. Now it's social distancing and not having huge crowds at first, then lock down. Now the measures are taken only that the health care system doesn't crash and doctors don't have to choose which patient will live or not.
South Korea was quite successful in Step 2. The US wasn't at all. That's it. You have lost the tracing and putting people in quarantine step. Only thing to do is step 3.
Of course, if you want more people to die, then do what the officials in 1918 did: have censorship and prevent people knowing how the disease is spreading and have them notice it only when people they know start dying. Unfortunately that isn't an option anymore.
I have picked up on it. My argument is that I am suspicious of step 3 for the reasons I’ve already stated.
As for comparing it to the Spanish flu, I have been accused of spreading disinformation because I wrote of other viruses and the measures taken to prevent them, so on that I cannot comment.
that's exactly what a vaccine is. Trials are underway, but it is expected to be 12 months out, at least. Imagine if you started using something and it had side-effects or lead to deaths. Vaccination is having a hard enough time in the US as it is.
He's just preparing the next pro Trump spin. Bad consequences from the lockdown? Experts gave Trump wrong advice. No strict measures enforced? Trump was emulating South Korea, but impotence down the line stymied him.
Note this last bit in the post:
Quoting NOS4A2
Already showing the seeds for the next blame game.
Quoting Punshhh
Based on the numbers, the UK is about one week behind Germany and France. They seem to be taking the same measures those countries took a week ago.
Italy, France and Germany are seeing a flattening of the curve of new infections, but the total number of patients will still rise for a significant time. So the question is how much capacity the UK has left.
How the CDC’s Restrictive Testing Guidelines Hid the Coronavirus Epidemic
Testing Blunders Crippled US Response as Coronavirus Spread
How U.S. coronavirus testing stalled: Flawed tests, red tape and resistance to using the millions of tests produced by the WHO
Looking to thinkers online for stability is a by-product of loving people? Nevermind. :smile:
Things should and are being tried. But such tests and vaccines require time to develop and try.
So the most important priority is to buy the necessary time by suppressing the virus now. In the US and most other countries, that means extreme social distancing until it is suppressed.
We can't afford to drop the ball on this.
Yet, still wants to declare the crisis over so everyone can go back to work after Easter.
Germany, meanwhile, is reporting a death rate of < 1%, because its testing and quarantine were carried out with characteristic Teutonic efficiency and at the earliest possible time.
You totally have the right to your opinion even if I'm not so suspicious as you are about it.
Then I think you should follow how the pandemic will be in 1) Sweden and especially B) Mexico. Swedes are taking social distancing seriously, but they haven't yet gone to lock down mode. Schools are still open. And Mexico? Well, they have been quite free of this pandemic for a long time and still take it lightly. At least the Mexican President doesn't worry so much about it. I think they assume that step 2) measures are enough.
Quoting Hanover
Great idea, except increasing medical capacity takes time. Not going to happen in weeks, Hanover. In 2021 the situation will be different for sure. But this would be a thing to do before a pandemic, you know.
Luckily my country has been so afraid of Russia that we have had these reserves of the "National Emergency Supply Agency", basically a remnant from the Cold War that for example still has grain reserves for 6 months and hospital equipment and those personal protective equipment stacked for wartime. They have now started sending these equipment for the first time to hospitals around the country.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
So suspend rent and provide income relief. Hell, establish a UBI ASAP. Better yet, communalize the means of production everywhere, put businesses into the hands of workers, and nationalize every single company that asks for and gets a bailout. Abolish the private health system by yesterday, and ensure that everyone can afford to be treated. Suspend all medical debt. Hell, abolish all medical debt. Time for a debt jubilee. Worried about the economy being passed on to children? Abolish all student debt too. Appropriate the wealth of anyone worth more than a billion dollars; name a dog park after them so that they feel better. So many things that can be done. But you'd much prefer to murder half a million+ of your population.
Of another country's population. NOS isn't an American. Not sure if that makes it worse or not. At least some on the right are being honest about what they want though, including real Americans like the Lt. Governor of Texas:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/us/coronavirus-texas-patrick-abbott.html
"Mr. Patrick, the Texas chairman of the president’s campaign, appeared on Fox News on Monday and said that he was not only ready for the country and the economy to get moving again amid the coronavirus pandemic, but also that he and other grandparents might be willing to die for that to happen."
Capitalism is a cult.
Also release prisoners and house them too.
If you do a quick google check, a figure of 10k comes up for deaths linked to the great recession suicides. That doesn't begin to compare with the estimates for ignoring the virus. But of course, facts don't matter.
Why not just eliminate money altogether and toss everyone in the Gulag who disagrees? No. We’ve seen the lengths despots have gone to realize their technocratic schemes. They always end up using human beings as the brick and mortar.
Although abolishing money is not a particularly bad idea.
Those sorts of appeals to emotions only work on your fellow travellers. I can see the difference between who say they care for others vs. those who actually do. With a simple twist of the tongue you can say you’re saving lives without having to rise from your lazy-boy.
That was actually funny.
"We already know that the time of capital, of the self-valorization of value, is futural, anticipatory, always oriented to not now but later. This is what drives intensifications of production -- the speed up and automation, the push to get more out of workers to generate the more of whatever might lead to more profit in the future. The same with investment: forecasting what will happen is what generates bets now; they are always bets on a future.
Capitalist time is out of joint with the time of the virus. How? Tests for the virus look backward: did infection happen? What was the cause of the sickness one presents? It's why in the US in particular we are playing catch up. Capitalists didn't see profit in anticipating the epidemic -- "too many" ventilators and empty beds are but heaps of dead capital. We can only know where the virus was, make guesses about how it traveled.
The time of life with Covid 19 is asynchronous, fragmented, dissonant. The rhythms of our lives have been disrupted -- school, train, work, drinks, home or whatever familiar combinations gave our life its specific punctuation. Private time appears in its excesses: too much or too little, utterly alone or overbearingly together. At the same time, too much time becomes absorbed in screens. Every meeting, every communication -- work, entertainment, connection, boredom -- has the same interface whether we want it or not. Like the PBS show for tweens said in the seventies "c'mon and zoom-zoom-zooma-zoom."
Working from home makes work endless, a new elongation of the workday enabled not just by the technology but by the elimination of specific sites for work. It's not a snow day and the demands just keep coming.
Capitalist time is impatient. No rest (and they never learn this means no recovery). No time to live, or to try to save lives. No time to wait out the epidemic, protect the frontline medical workers, develop a vaccine and save some lives. For us there's no time to waste. For capitalists it's wasted time.
And with the tantrums and temper of a child incapable of waiting of accepting the imperative of constraint now for the sake of a future good, the president and his class -- he's not alone in this; Lloyd Blankfein has weighed in behalf of the banks --are saying "Time's up.""
as they say concerning the virus? I mean, what the hell ! ?Has there been no one watching out for this s*#t? With the billions that is spent on defense this is what we get? But , I'm just a common man, what do I know?
No one is sleeping by the switch. The switch has been deliberately ignored in the name of profit. You're a common man, which probably means it's OK if you - or at least your parents and grandparents - die.
Real Trump = indistinguishable from Saturday Night Live Trump.
Where's that figure from?
To be fair, for that remark you’re gonna have to let nobrainnolife rant about TDS for around the 40th time.
nobeernolife + TDS = 38 results
Talk about a one-trick pony.
I noticed. :eyes:
So, the US today* had almost twice as many new Covid cases as anywhere else in the world. Sounds like a good time to stop social distancing and open everything up. :vomit:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
*After the daily update, today is now yesterday. Click on the tab.
Comrade Britney. Actually re-listened to some greatest hits earlier today on the back of this. So good.
No, just a lack of imagination.
Hypothetical scenarios - when taken seriously - prepare people for unforeseen scenarios they would previously have deemed highly improbable to impossible.
I think the figure of 600,000 is an underestimate, because we don't yet know what the mortality rate would be were the virus to become concentrated in communities and the social effects that would have.
There have been reports that healthy doctors in China and Italy have died due to receiving a high dose on infection. Presumably the virus incubates more quickly in this case overwhelming the immune system before it has a chance to develop anti bodies. Where the virus becomes concentrated in a community there will be more cases of high dose infection, higher mortality and the resultant panic, in which people overwhelmed with fear will flee leaving the whoever is left to die. This social reaction has already happened in Spain in a number of care homes. Where dead people (presumably not dead when they left) were found abandoned by their care workers.
Yes, although it is not enforced and a bit vague. I am pointing to London as a hotspot, it is still spreading freely, on the Underground, in shops, petrol stations etc.
Yeah, yeah. I am sure whoever you're working for already has a whole narrative lined up for you to peddle.
Quoting StreetlightX
I am of the opinion that the "trolley problem" is entirely based on an unjustified distinction between action and inaction.
But in the case of doctors deciding who gets access to medical equipment, a "trolley problem" only comes up when the same equipment could either treat one very sick person or several slightly less sick persons.
In other cases, it's an issue of conflict of duties. I think most moral philosophies agree that in case of conflict between equal duties, a personal decision is permitted. As far as moral questions go, the "general economic consequences" Vs "individual lifes" conflict is a lot more interesting, I think.
What would Bernie do?
I trust him.
:wink:
His expert said he came from a perspective of hope... then went on to explain how the scientific perspective was different...
Have not seen the foremost expert on infectious diseases since!
:zip:
#Nodissidentsallowed
Already the leadership in this crisis has been taken by the governors.
That's the truth. Trump just mumbles his thing. He's just at the level of importance as Joe Biden.
Have you been waiting to listen what Joe Biden has to say about this? I don't think so.
One additional one:
Never forget that activists and politicians will capitalize on any tragedy for political gain.
Quoting Coronavirus expert advisory panel member calls on Federal Government to lock Australia down
Apply the hammer, folks, before more people unnecessarily die.
--
University of Sydney modelling showing that the virus can only be controlled if 8 out of 10 Australians stay home.
Yes and no. Even the framing of this question is open - or ought to be open - to radical revision: what is traditionally called 'the economy' is largely an abstraction that excludes large swathes of society as among the 'extra-economic', even as it relies on those areas for its very lifeblood. It's only when set against this abstraction does individual life become potentially set in conflict with this chimera. The issue is that the chimera is as real as it is illusory: it is real insofar as it is created, forged by power and political will, one happy to countenance the literal deaths of millions in order to sustain it for the benefit of a few.
If the trolly problem is an obvious liminal situation, a situation that exists only in the midst of tragedy and utter despair (and thus an ethical aberration), COVID's larger significance is its exposure of 'the economy' - the one in always potential 'conflict' with the individual - as equally aberrant and exceptional. An abberence so normalized that it takes the utter disruption of global life for people to even catch a glimpse of just how fucked up it is. It's less a question of 'the economy' vs individual lives as it is this economy vs. Individual lives.
Don't underestimate the abundance of such cases. Recovery can be long and drawn out, or it can be relatively quick. If a person is on a slow path, not showing immediate signs of recovery, and the equipment is needed elsewhere, then there is the need for that decision you describe. The problem is that the need for a decision is a heavy burden which doesn't go away until the person on the slow path is either unplugged or starts to recover, or if there are no new cases of illness. So the people forced with making that decision will rapidly get calloused into the quick and easy decision...unplug and get it over with. Then comes the second level of callousness, decide not to even give a particular person the equipment in the first place. If you are that particular person, you wouldn't want a conflict of interest ('that one's ugly', 'that one's fat', or 'he was rude to me when he came in', or whatever).
During/soon after tragedy = now isn’t the time
Long after tragedy = this isn’t needed
I see it said about gun control too. So when is the right time?
Tragedy - especially this tragedy - is already political. Anyone who says otherwise is being - political.
In Trump's mind, a deadline for returning to work provides business certainty which will be the basis for "resurrecting" the economy.
In reality, there will be no certainty until the virus is stopped.
Well, I have refrained from mentioning that Mitch there's-no-money-for-crazy-Dem-spending-on-social-programs McConnell took barely a nanosecond to pull 2 trillion dollars out his ass when his donors needed a bailout, so you can't be referring to me. :halo:
Quoting StreetlightX
This seems like a odd line of reasoning. 'This economy' is the one we have after all, meaning that insofar an economy serves a function in society, it seems to me that we should look at the effects actions will have on the one that is realized rather than hypothetical economies that we maybe could or could not have.
Something that is created is not illusory, nor does the fact that it is created automatically imply that anything is possible. Things are created in concert with the world, not in some boundless vacuum, there are limits to what you can do with it. But sure, we probably can create other possible configuration of the economy that are more fair, more sustainable, more etc... within those limitation. But that doesn't mean that the one we have should not be a consideration in deciding how to act. We put human lives in the balance with economy every day, otherwise all traffic should be banned immediately for example. Discussion about most policies would be literally impossible if human lives were a hard boundary that should never be crossed.
And one more thing, you are probably perfectly well aware that the the phrase 'literal deaths of millions in order to sustain the economy for the benefit of a few' is highly contentious and politicized. This is ideology, not philosophy... because it's not that simple.
This is not a response to what I wrote. It's hard to see, in fact, what it is at all. Did I argue that we shouldn't 'take into consideration the economy we have' when 'deciding how to act'? Arguably this is the only thing I have done, insofar as everything I've written is nothing but a critique and 'consideration' of exactly the misery wrought by 'this economy', and which threatens to deepen given the the instincts of certain well-placed individuals in response to CV. So one is hard pressed to know what in the world you think you're responding to.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
The only ideology is that which remains blind to both history and ongoing ecological devastation wrought by capitalism, including the ecologies of human populations all over the earth (witness, incidentally, the flourishing of ecosystems and sky around the world in the wake of the shutdown of capitalist production). It takes a wilful ignorance or unquestioned indoctrination to think that statements of reality are 'contentious'. When your leaders have the open audacity and shamelessness to argue that gramps probably ought to be written-off and you call critics of this 'contentious' then your scale of what is and is not contentious is so far off median that you've lost the capacity to pronounce judgement on anything whatsoever.
Governors are responsible for public health issues. They're at their maximum authority now. The president's role is supportive, to address problems that all the states face, and to be a figurehead. If the US has to go to war right now, then the president would be at maxed out authority as well.
Regardless of ideology, there is the reality that resources are scare and there is the reality that the availability of resources is directly related to their collection and creation. If we were to institute worldwide universal healthcare, there would be a decline in healthcare for many currently receiving better healthcare than the median (you, for instance), and decisions would have to be made regarding how much healthcare we could allot anyone, including gramps who probably would benefit less from the limited treatment than someone else, and so decisions would be made that, well, he just has to die now.
We also realize every day that vehicles must drive down the road to get workers to work and assembly lines must run to bring products, including healthcare, to the marketplace. We have in fact decided that a certain number of deaths are appropriate because, as every actuary can show you, we should expect x number of workers not to make it work because of a collision in their cars, and a certain number will get caught up on the conveyor belt at work and not see another day of productivity.
You can couch this as heartless, as we are making decisions where we know a certain number of people will predictably die in order to feed the machine of productivity. I think we all also realize that the alternative of having everyone stay in their bed to shelter them from the reality of life is ultimately not better.
And despite what you might say of capitalism, the world becomes safer everyday. Cars are much safer than before and there are guardrails, signs, and all sorts of protective devices everywhere. In fact, American roads are so safe, they become more dangerous because people feel safe driving at much higher speeds and expose themselves to risk.
Quoting StreetlightX
Why is this a good thing? Under what value system must I adhere to believe that flourishing ecosystems are a good thing to the extent they don't in some way benefit humankind? As my ideology links a positive outcome only to the extent humankind benefits, I would have to weigh the value of these now thriving ecosystems against the prior state of affairs where people had jobs and were supporting themselves versus whatever benefit I now get from enjoying the returned natural scenery.
Echoing what Frank said, this is by design and is consistent with the federalist notion of states having certain authority. This is really just a quibble about delegation of power, regarding how the public health crisis is to be responded to with a nation so large. To give perspective on this, Finland, your home country, has 5 million people. My home state of Georgia has 10.5 million. The threats in Georgia are no where near the threats in New York, and much less so than in say Wyoming.
Yep. I heard a pundit say that it might be hard to get the governors to relinquish power now that they have it.
I really don't view the coronavirus crisis as evidence that capitalism is a failed enterprise. Whatever bailout money is available, we must remember, was collected in a capitalistic system. Without getting overly ideological, I think we can all agree that regardless of economic system, from laissez faire capitalism to totalitarian communism, nothing can survive or provide any social security if no one goes to work. I have no reason to expect the economic rebound will be less in America than in Europe.
I don't know, but not while everyone is panicked.
Interesting spellcheck aside: Panic takes on a k when you have to write panicked. Know any other words that end in c that do that? Magicked is one. This game is more fun. I found this too: colicky, havocker, picnicky, plasticky, panicking, picnicking, panicky, magicked, colicking, picnicked, bivouacking, colicked, mimicked, frolicked, picnicker, demosaicked, garlicky, mimicker, havocking, bivouacked, demosaicker, havocked, panicked, mimicking, frolicking, demosaicking.
I feel like I've left the topic. My apologies. ADD much?
Is all this hyperbolic disdain really necessary?
If all you did was write a critique of this economy, then you are the one answering besides the point because the issue you were responding to was about the moral considerations in weighing the economy against individual lives :
If you point was that 'this economy' is the cause of the fact these moral questions need to be formulated in this way to begin with, then I have answered exactly to the point.
Quoting StreetlightX
Statements of reality? Please. There's numerous ways in which you could frame and describe that. You choose to use those words and choose to omit a whole lot more, because you clearly have a political agenda. That's fine, but it's not philosophy.
I don't like Trump, but he does have a point - it's not his point per se anyway - that people will die from an economic crisis too. It's not only about not writing off gramps, it's about not writing off gramps without plunging the US and the world into a giant crisis. And yes the fact that the corona-outbreak exposes yet again that we are too dependant on an economy that seems very fragile, should be a major concern in the future (aside from questions about ecology and social justice), but that doesn't diminish the fact that there is - now - a legitimate question as to how long and how far we can and should go in closing down everything.
And seriously, moral indignation is a poor substitute for good arguments.
It’s not a bailout. They’re loans. As far as I am aware the only part that is being forgiven is the wages.
:up: The number of infections will start going up again when the lockdown ends. If we do it in steps, there's going to be frustration. The people making these decisions are flying blind. We've never dealt with an organism like this before.
Yeah it really is unprecedented. In the short term lots of testing is going to be vital, so we don't need to keep flying blind. And in the mid to long term, there will very likely be a vaccin.... and more knowledge, better measures and infrastructure in case of new outbreaks.
(I've always said to Americans that Finland is like Minnesota. It's quite the same even in the climate.)
Well, I was talking about leadership. The Federal Government can coordinate, give general decrees and lead the effort. Or then it can choose not to, which in that case it's left to the next level. We could see it even here earlier: before the the administration decided to introduce state of emergency laws and shut the schools, communal leaders, mayors and individual schools were starting to make these decisions themselves. Once the administration introduced country-wide regulations, then it was clear who called the shots.
If Trump would have asked the states lock down and do similar things, I would guess that in this case the states would have obliged. Yes, he did call a state of emergency, but didn't ask for more drastic measures than just to have social distancing. And now it seems like he's whining about the measures taken.
Quoting Hanover
You still have more infections more deaths than we do (and yes, nearly twice many people), but we are roughly in the same ballpark when it comes to the infection. I think your governor Kemp has done now pretty much the same things now as the Finnish leaders. Here they are likely putting the capital and it's region under quarantine next weekend, so no going to one's summer cabin. (There's one district in the Northern Finland without any infections at all.)
There is good news on the testing front. According to Dr. Birx at the CDC, the US has done more tests in 8 days than South Korea has done in 8 weeks. According to Birx, the US is now doing 50,000 to 70,000 tests a day. So hopefully we’ll get some reliable data out of the deal.
Makes you pause when you contact people to know you may never see them again.
Gotta love those democratic-socialist New Yorkers who are acting like Libertarians in not following orders handed down from the state.
The WH says if you recently were in NY then you should self-quarantine. How about not leaving NY at all and self-quarantining yourself in NY if you are already in NY. NY is already under a mandatory lock-down, so how it it that people are leaving NY?
This is the typical, illogical, reactionary, emotional responses you get from a govt elected by idiots (both democrat and republican).
Reminds me of something I read just a few minutes ago:
[quote=Glenn Beck] “I would rather have my children stay home and have all of us who are over 50 go in and keep this economy going and working,” Beck said. “Even if we all get sick, I’d rather die than kill the country. Because it’s not the economy that’s dying, it’s the country.”[/quote]
The country (essentially our culture?) is the economy? How fucked-up is that.
Yep. It's the fitting of a toy model of the economy onto the reality of social relations; anyone that doesn't fit the model can die; is not even acknowledged as having any true existence ('the country is the economy - and there's nothing left over... and even if there is, (which there isn't!) it can be safely ignored').
Worth noting that this will fail even by 'sound' economic standards. When your hospitals are overflowing and even .05% of your population dies, that's economic disaster. So worth calling it like it is: the concern for the the rich, nothing more. It's a lie both ways. Those who swallow it are willing dupes for the monied classes.
No, there isn't. Until the virus is under complete control, there is no question. It's that simple. Anything else is dissimulation and the effective murder of populations - primarily the poor, the old, and the already sick - in the interests of the rich. If you think differently you're either objectively wrong or OK with that.
Your ideology is dumb. Humankind doesn't exist independently of the ecologies that sustain it. The destruction of that ecology is responsible for the crisis we're in today.
There is always that question when you are thinking about precautionary measures. Let's face it: curbing the corona virus infections spike is an anticipatory measure. With precautions you always have to make some decisions on what is enough. And if we leave one Trump aside, in fact there is quite an uniform response to the pandemic. The US isn't going a different way from other countries when you look at the US as a combination of 50 states and what they are doing and compare that to for example EU countries.
Nope. This is the easiest moral calculus anyone could be possibly faced with.
Nah, I'm not objectively wrong, I know I'm not. Because there is no complete control. Or at least the definition of complete controle is under discussion. At some point people will have to make a decision when to relax measures. Do we do that at 1%, 0,1% or 0,01 % risk? There will allways be some amount of risk, however miniscule, and so whether you like it or not human life is not a absolute. It never was, otherwise we wouldn't allow traffic, because we know there will be traffic deaths every day. And it seems relatively uncontroversial that we shouldn't ban all traffic. Maybe you could make the case that traffic deaths is different than this one, and that would be fine, but at least it needs to be argued. That is what philosophy should be about it seems to me.... otherwise it's just blind dogma.
First, I'm not remarking anything about Trump here:
Quoting ssu
Hence, we are making decisions about the future. The worst of a pandemic can last either 4-6 months or then come around next fall and winter 2020/2021. We are trying to anticipate the future here.
Well, as I and someone else already said, the governors are the de facto leaders in this case. And once the infection rate and the death start going up, everyone of them will go to the same kind of response. The medical community is quite clear on what to do here (and the pandemic came up so quickly that the lobby groups haven't been able to come with their own doctors and specialist spindoctors, literally).
Yet in every country they do have to think if they have gone to a lockdown and have quarantined areas (as they doing with the Capitol area here), then when to lift them? China gives an example already, but there's always the fear of new infections. Then the question will be (if the outcome is similar to China) when will those restaurants open and gatherings of people be allowed when there's no new deaths and tiny amount of infections?
Perhaps a real fear in my view will be if the numbers of deaths are simply withheld or marked as 'deaths to other causes'. Not now when the pandemic is spreading, but when the pandemic has passed. As ugly it may sound, it could happen especially in the US. So perhaps a decade from now a medical historian tells that actually far more were killed in the corona-virus pandemic.
"The sheer magnitude of the population difference between China and Spain should preclude the possibility of there being more coronavirus deaths in Spain than there are in China. But it's not. China's material, institutional, cultural, and political infrastructure give it a capacity to respond that is far more effective than what we see in Spain and Italy -- and the United States.
I'm not worried about increasing authoritarianism in the US. That concern is animated by an underlying anti-communism that either mistakenly thinks that public interest is simply self-interest generalized or that takes "give me freedom or give me death" as the final word on liberty (and of course the subtext here is give My liberty is more valuable than YOUR death).
The danger is not authoritarianism -- it's capitalism, both in the way that bailouts prioritize corporations over people (Boeing? really?) and in the concomitant focus on economic recovery even as the epidemic is still in its early phase. So the subtext here is profits are not just more important than death. Profits are death, a truth of capitalism and imperialism that the pandemic displays in all its horror."
More berating remarks, great!
I'm not faffing around the point. It's a decision every government across the globe will have to make in the coming months. If this is not a moral issue that is relevant for real world decisions than I don't know what would be.
In Italy utilitarian principles are applied to the triage,
and the elderly are given low priority because they are less likely to survive. That’s an unfair hand to be dealt, especially since the elderly have spent much of their lives paying into the system that has promised to care for them. So though you can speciously blame others for theoretical and future deaths of hundreds of thousands, you have said nothing of actual deaths and the decisions that have led to their demise.
Prioritising healthcare allocation when it's so scarce is motivated by the same risk and efficiency principles that should have been guiding government responses in the US and the UK.
Say death is the outcome. You want to minimise the deaths of people in your care. If you give treatment to someone who is likely to die even with the treatment vs someone who is comparatively much less likely to die with the same treatment, you minimise the amount of deaths.
Say collapse of the healthcare system is the outcome. You want to minimise the risk of the collapse of the healthcare system. If you take measures to reduce the load on it, vs if you don't take measures to reduce the load on it, you minimise the risk of collapse.
Say getting measles, mumps or rubella is the outcome. You want to minimise the risk of people getting that, if you vaccinate vs not vaccinating, you reduce the amount of people that get measles, mumps and rubella.
Say global economic collapse due to a pandemic is the outcome. You want to take measures that minimise the risk. On the one hand, maybe you think that taking measures against the pandemic increases the risk of global economic collapse; and it might, instantaneously. But as we've seen, and as was predicted, if you don't do that, the risk is even greater.
Nurses, doctors and epidemiologists understand that better than politicians, apparently.
The problem is you cannot predict the future.
Love all these 'its so uncertain' responses. No it's not. Objectively wrong.
I cannot disagree with that.
I'm gonna say this one more time then never again because you're wasting my time: I don't care for your hypotheticals.
Perhaps you can provide an example of a model that has gotten it right, given that it is so objective.
Vaccination has the same logic.
The same shit that makes people angry at anti-vaccers killing their kids should make us angry at our countries' responses killing the elderly, the sick, the poor. If "killing" seems like an overstatement, call it "exacerbating the risk of severe long term health outcomes with substantial risk of mortality".
I’ve already looked.
Could a healthcare system every be universal if they cannot care for their patrons universally? Italy has universal coverage, or at least that’s what they sold the good people of Italy, but it turns out not to be the case.
It seems like a prelude to war metaphors. A good American should be willing to die for their country.
The suggestion that our culture (our values, beliefs, aspirations, etc.) is all about capitalism and nothing besides, if that's the suggestion, is the hight of philistinism.
This is word games. Having the bandwidth and resources to give needed healthcare access to everyone would have made the collapse of our healthcare systems far less likely. Where are the private healthcare providers in all this? Absent. When it comes down to it, when socieities really need it, universal healthcare access is obviously a necessity.
Can you point me to reliable reporting on how the elderly are being given low priority in Italy?
As for the global economy, if it collapses, the pandemic was just the trigger. This is kind of a test for whether there is underlying instability. We can throw money at the economy to stabilize it. That's worked in the past. If it doesn't work this time, IOW if we find we're 'pushing on a string', then it's the underlying problem that's leading to collapse, not the pandemic.
So we wouldn't decide to let an elderly person die because the global economy is unstable. We let elderly people die because we aren't in a science fiction novel where we can transplant memories into clones. People die. This virus has a history of doing unrecoverable damage to lungs. For a young person we could possibly do a lung transplant. We wouldn't do that for an 80 year old, again, not because of the economy, but because it wouldn't make sense.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/18/facebook-posts/italys-overwhelmed-hospitals-are-treating-elderly-/
I understand the utilitarian arguments for giving lower priority to the elderly. But it is unjust.
Quoting StreetlightX
Ah. The bliss of looking at everything from a distinct political view. :snicker:
Fair enough.
It will be interesting to see, when this is all over, how well the various systems grappled with this situation.
@Nobeernolife
Damn, I was all geared up to get deranged about this.
We’re talking about governance, which is inherently political.
Quoting NOS4A2
Again, what do you mean by "lower priority"?
The bliss of knowing the basics about the state of the Italian economy? And your alternative is... ignorance?
Quoting the doctor:
“No one is getting kicked out, but we’re offering criteria of priority. These choices are made in normal times, but what’s not normal is when you have to assist 600 people all at once."
I’m a layman, so when he says “criteria of priority” I assumed he meant different patients are given different priorities, higher and lower. I thought this was how triage worked but I could be wrong.
How would you figure justice into it? I'm asking, not being a jerk.
I do want to point out that the most rational conversation available to me on this forum is with the forum troll. The most irrational parties are the moderators. Why is that?
I’m more of a “let justice reign even though the heavens fall” kind of guy.
I think it’s unfair to give a lower priority to those who have arguably payed more into a system that has promised to heal them. But this situation may, in the end, change my mind in this regard.
You blast the policy makers for imposing austerity and then you blame capitalism as the culprit. It sounds like unsound government policy got the Italians where they are. As I recall, and I didn't follow it too closely, was that the EU imposed austerity because the richer nations (like Germany) were tired of propping it up. The Italians inability to control their currency because they were stuck to the Euro made their problems worse.
Present company excluded.
But, to your question, if your most rational conversation is with a troll, you're being really well trolled.
Quoting NOS4A2
No hospital has promised to heal anyone. In the case of COVID-19, if your immune system doesn't heal you, you will die. All the hospital can do is support you until your immune system does its thing.
Yes, and at least you admit it.
Quoting StreetlightX
I'd tone it down a notch with the argument everything is happening because the evils of the neoliberal capitalist death cult. I would say that the dire situation in Italy has more to due with the fact that it was among the first places hit after China.
Not necessarily a reply to you but to the general discussion going on. Triage is about comparing the likelihood of saving lives. So the lives are valued equally but outcomes aren't. When certain politicians are talking about the reaction being worse than letting CV run its course, they are most definitely comparing human lives to dollars. It is not the same as it's not a question that many more people will die if you do not flatten the curve.
:point:
Yes, now that Trump has defeated the economy, it's time to open up corona again! Corporations are dying, people?! What's wrong with you?
Seriously though, ideological differences aside, steer clear of the sociopathic capitalism brigade. 'Sacrificing' hundreds of thousands of the weak and old for the economy is horribly wrong from just about every angle, moral and otherwise. Do the hammer. Your economy will recover.
Many comments previous, I get into this subject when it was clear that containment was being half-asked to protect the stock market, and then containment just abandoned; going to "mitigation". UK was quite explicit about this. Of course, they just didn't really understand what they were doing and they'd just end up like everyone else but with a worse problem.
There are two opposing views about the purpose of the economy that have a an overlapping logic in some sense, but are not the same and give rise to different decisions.
The first view of the purpose of the economy is that its fundamental roll is to keep people alive; it is that which allows us to live. It might have other purposes, but only as a compliment to and not in conflict with this first purpose.
The second view of the purpose of the economy is to give value to owners; it is that which provides dividends to the investor class.
In the first view of the economy, lifting the quarantine is justified because at some point more people really will die than from the virus. Even if we ignore "jobs", which warrants another discussion as could be completely meaningless in this view of the economy in the event those jobs just undermine nature or other social structures we depend on, but self-isolation has mental, physical and educational consequences that in themselves at some point easily compete with a "mild epidemic" -- i.e. one that is not overwhelming the health system. So, if the epidemic is under control, then indeed the argument that further sheltering in place is doing more harm than good can be made, it's what government will say, and everyone will more or less agree. The principle is not really controversial. This is why we don't self-isolate to defeat the flu every year, and we're self-isolating now because this is not the seasonal flu.
However, in the second view of the economy, lifting quarantine measures is not because it will start to save lives, but rather it will get the stock market moving up again. From this point of view, the purpose of self-isolating to slow the spread of the virus was not really sensical to begin with. The virus simply doesn't kill enough people. For instance, if we were all robots working in a factory and a software-virus came through and disabled permanently 1 percent of us, it's really not reason to stop the factor, especially if a cure isn't even guaranteed to work. It would be even more absurd to stop the factory if the virus only permanently disabled obsolete robots in the back. So, viewing people as workers and consumers and something of value insofar as they contribute to the stock market going up -- for the investor class that's on the whole simply diversified into the stock market -- then there would only be alarm if we're talking "real numbers" like 10 - 20 percent, of which the coronavirus is simply an order of magnitude less lethal, and therefore irrelevant, in itself, as a menace to the stock market. So not pursuing the optimum strategy, to just keep factories and everything running as normal and tolerate a few units going offline, is extremely frustrating from this point of view.
As I mention in those previous comments, this second maximize-dividends view of the economy sacrifices peoples lives for increasing stocks all the time. For instance, allowing plenty of toxins in everything, the destruction of the environment, psychologically intolerable work conditions, the debt-to-homeless machine, are all examples of sacrificing people for stock value -- the pushback from trying to reduce pollution or make working conditions compatible with actually enjoying life even at the bottom will create the pushback that it's "bad for X,Y, Z corporations" which really means bad for dividends as that's the purpose of corporations.
The difference with this crisis is that it's on such short a timescale that it's impossible to muddy the water of cause-and-effect with propaganda for enough people to be begging to be abused and exploited and any future for their children corrupted; as per the usual "non-toxic, environmental friendly, psychologically friendly regulations would be bad for the economy, cost jobs, just not work, even if there was evidence of a problem which we flatly deny, and even if there was nothing can be done about it". The logic is exactly the same for the pandemic, and a lot of people swallow it whole, but not enough: there's still too many people that genuinely love their parents, grandparents, in-laws and vulnerable people. The atomization of society is not as complete as necessary for the optimum response in this particular situation.
Holy shit, that's horrendous. I assume they're just stacking them up in tents. Could NATO help?
Or you think that Trump will order the lifting the 'lock downs' or what? Perhaps the pandemic situation will have an effect on that in just a few weeks, as this macabre show has just only started...
...even if in the end it won't be so apocalyptic as during the time when Bernt Notke painted the painting above.
Not unless NATO has a bunch of respirators lying around somewhere. The issue is specialised equipment and medical personnel. And what makes it worse is that the neighboring countries cannot afford to help (some token gestures have been made) since they need to husband their resources to avoid the same fate.
No, you should get wet in your pants about this, Orangeman´s family takes isnt this just what you have been cackling for?
I am surprised, but then again not. This is not the Biden or Clinton clan we are talking about here.
So the world is going to stand around and let this happen to Italy?
Wow.
109 so far here: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
Well they have been for the last two weeks. Or rather most of the world. China did send equipment and advisors.
Spain is now in pretty much the same situation. And one shudders to think what will happen in Greece's overcrowded refugee camps, where most of the personnel has already left for fear of what is to come.
Also a big problem that needs to be added to the specialized skills needed to keep someone alive on a respirator, is a large majority of respirator patients have other health conditions which need to be treated too. There are really a lot of limiting factors to trying to scale adequate care when the details start getting looked at.
Of course, that health workers don't even have enough masks is just insane, and that part of the problem could have easily been solved. What I find bizarre is that stocks of masks weren't renewed after SARS-1 even in places that tapped into their mask-stock. The utility of masks seems to be at the top of "what did we learn" lest from the SARS-1 experience.
Thanks for the info. It's awful.
Very true. I’m considering the policies of lawmakers and politicians. I think the Hippocratic oath suffices where medical practice is concerned.
Apparently you can't read or write well.
No, it is not crazy. Economic activity is necessary for people to live.... we can not go back to a hunter gatherer society. I think you are spoiled by having always a shop with shelves full of food stuffs nearby.... there are places where that is not the case.
So we're trying to make a big deal out of some weird comments made by the governor of Texas? That's not a productive use of your time.
It's worse in Spain and a lot worse in Iran. I was listening to an epidemiologist earlier who had been estimating the extent of the epidemic in Iran. He concluded that it was actually a couple of magnitudes higher than they are letting on. Somewhere between 700,000 and 7 million cases. Apparently they have been observed digging massive trenches around the city at the epicentre, by satellite.
I'm so looking forward to this playing out in my backyard. Holy fuck.
I don't think he actually can as @Hanover indicated. It would be up to state officials. But he undermines those of them who want to be responsible and emboldens others who don't. Not to mention the message it sends to the public. What appals me most is the thinking behind it.
Which is just another way of saying they have no idea. My guess is that you have somewhere between $0 and $6.3 million dollars in your checking account, which is that same 6,300,000 range.
For patients or healthcare workers?
Thank you for deeming it worthy your time to actually argue the point!
And I mostly agree with you, the economy should be there in the service of the rest of society and not the other way around.
The trouble I have with this is that it's not always clear how you would separate out the two opposing views from each other when it comes to making concrete decisions relating to the economy. In case of early Trump and Johnson reactions to the crisis, they probably did have the economy as monetary value for a certain class in mind rather than the interests of the society at large. We know their ideologies....
But more generally, everything seems so tied together that it seems hard to separate out an economy in service of the public and an economy as a moneymaking machine for the rich. Suppose the stockmarket is in danger of crashing. One might say, that's fine, it's just a bunch of traders, banks and the rich loosing out on making more money, who cares... but wouldn't this also have consequences for the rest of the economy so that in the end it has real consequences for the general public and the poor? And I understand that this is a 'designflaw' in the system to put it euphemistically, and that it could and should be otherwise in a number of ways... but until it is actually otherwise, it doesn't really matter right, because it still will have real consequences that are bad for the general public.
And I don't doubt that politicians want to tell this story to keep people in line and use it knowingly for that purpose. But at the same time I don't think the story is completely made up out of whole cloth either. So yeah, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with this information.
You're an idiot if you think degraded ecosystems could benefit humankind other than in the most superficial, short-term ways.
And with this recession you won't go back to a hunter gatherer society.
Remember the financial crisis of 2008? Some call it the "Great Recession". Yeah, might have something even worse now. But that surely isn't the end of the World, just as isn't this pandemic.
I remember two really bad ones here, the 1990's recession and the 2008-2009 crisis, which really wasn't so bad here at all. When the depression first hit I was in the army, and afterwards there were really now jobs around. Before going to the army and just graduated from school I could pick from a multitude of jobs the place I wanted to go, literally. Afterwards I wondered why people had bitched so much about unemployment.
Anyway, this crisis is a truly external recession. Hence if there was a truly free market mechanism would be used and not socialism for the rich and connected, then this could be over too in a very short while. Like in a couple of years. But as the system is geared to serve the extremely rich, I'm not so sure how badly they f*k up the economy this time.
Quoting Nobeernolife
So you live in Venezuela?
I remember when I visited the Soviet Union in the final year of it's existence. I stayed with a family and they were horrified as shortages even bread started just then when I was there. They tried to keep a happy face, but they truly feared something like a civil war would erupt (like happened in Yugoslavia). Luckily that didn't happen, but with the war in Ukraine now we see just how close the situation was back then for a new Russian tragedy.
Iran has no idea.
And I guess sending troops from one country to help in the worst hit pandemic area and then them coming home would be like... how the Spanish Flu spread.
If there's one thing that really ought to change from this, it's the attitude against strategic reserves. They are seen as a waste of money. If you can produce the JOT (just on time) then your efficient. You save money. And now that the Health Care Systems have done this efficiency thing, we pay the price. Every nation is geared up for normal times, for normal consumption of material.
This is the one thing we ought to truly change.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/25/uk-coronavirus-mass-home-testing-to-be-made-available-within-days
12 Experts Questioning the Coronavirus Panic
“As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious diseases (HCID) in the UK.”
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid#status-of-covid-19
Yes and this would be an inadequate analysis, simplistic to the point of redundancy. If you're not talking healthcare and it's deliberate sabotage by the EU - in service, by the way, of tranferring public wealth into the hands of overseas private lenders with no democratic accountability - then you ought to simply stop talking altogether. Worth also mentioning that millions of Italian factory workers are still going to work, having been deemed 'essential services' despite being entirely unnecessary, hence the call going on over there, for a general strike:
https://www.leftvoice.org/italy-calls-general-strike-our-lives-are-worth-more-than-your-profits
I will never tone this shit down just so you can feel comfortable. I hope you squim.
Also, despite such a big aging population, Italy has for several years, been closing hospitals & therefore has been cutting back on hospital beds too.
“Between 2000 and 2017, the number of hospital beds in Italy considerably decreased, from 268,057 to 192,548 units. It comes as no surprise that the number of hospitals and more specifically the number of public hospitals in the country also declined during the same time range.”
https://www.statista.com/statistics/557293/hospital-beds-in-italy/
The US has also been decreasing health resources.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2016/089.pdf
This is an argument in favor of the preppers it seems. Noah was a crazy old coot until the rain started to fall.
can we just collectively let go with being more level-headed than the next guy and deal with what's happening right now?
:rofl:
You hit the nail with corporate/business culture. People are often deemed less important than the bottom line. Yet, it is the people who consume and contribute to the bottom line.
Quoting StreetlightX
I actually agree with you, and them. But what this brings up is the whole point of the economic system. The "neoliberal" philosophy would say that profits, even for the very wealthy raises all boats (if we are assuming non-corrupt actors). Thus profits are the key to success for everyone, even (apparently?) in the midst of a pandemic.
So I guess, are you proposing that there is a balance between profit and non-profit incentives, or are you saying that profit should never even be in the equation? Damn the system, we need to be incentivized somewhere else.. Well if you say by love, and community, and respect for each other, great.. but I'd like to see that in practice.. Notice, people only use these ideals of self-sacrifice in times of crisis NOT in times of prosperity. Thus, it would seem these more "noble" incentives are only truly in place when there is perceived to be a major crisis, but not as typical modus operendi.
Further, the neoliberals would just say that the profits drive the ability to have things like ventilators in the first place. The self-sacrifice is a microcosm for how all this technology that we use in this crisis was created.. Limiting growth of profit-incentives/business culture would limit the ability to have all this technology that we now rely on in the crisis (and can maybe afford to use by government command when absolutely needed)..They would say for technology and prosperity to continue, it would need to keep moving forward, engines moving.
Please note, I personally do not have these sentiments, but giving the devil's advocate view here.
No, a capitalist would just say that profits bring well-being to all who participate and contribute to its growth. A rising tide lifts all boats and all that.
Right, a capitalists definition of well-being. What is that exactly?
More ability to spend on goods and services. Health throws a wrench in their equation.. Somehow the American style of employer-based health care (otherwise you're screwed unless you're so poor as to possibly be eligible for Medicaid), is considered more efficient than a single-payer system.
I enjoyed that one analogy:
“Should it turn out that the epidemic wanes before long, there will be a queue of people wanting to take credit for this. And we can be damned sure draconian measures will be applied again next time. But remember the joke about tigers. “Why do you blow the horn?” “To keep the tigers away.” “But there are no tigers here.” “There you see!”.
It’s a good little racket they’ve set up for themselves. They are both the problem and the solution.
I do agree that we will see a lot of people hurt by the reaction too. This is all the more reason that we need to rethink how we react to crises. 2 trillion dollars without strings attached for the recipients seems to be the wrong way to go about it.
I had hoped at best for $1000/mo to everyone for the duration of the quarantines, but what we've got now is $600/week ? $2400/mo for the unemployed (which, if that follows state qualifications for unemployment, includes those with reduced hours like me, at least here in California), plus the $1200 one-time payments for everyone.
Altogether that basically offsets my own losses from reduced hours for like four and a half months, and provides even greater benefits for all those making much less than me, who need it all the more. (I personally could coast for about three years at half-pay before I even needed to touch my IRA, so I was never the most hurt by this, but it's still really nice to not potentially erase years of hard-won progress toward eventual home-ownership).
I do not think so either, but that seemed to be what you wanted. All I was saying is that you can not separate the "economy" from the people. I have no problem with financial schemes collapsing, but a lockdown of a country effects the real world, the physical economy. You need things to be produced and delivered and basic services provided, For that you need people out there doing physical things and some sort monetary system to reward them for that. It sounded like you were trying to separate "the economy" from "the people". If that was not you meant, sorry.
What does "deference to capital" mean?
This does work to a degree, but the greed of those who dwell near the top of the pyramid poisons the whole system eventually. This results in exploitative practices and systems and social norms designed to hold the people at the bottom (below that privelidged top layer) down and to remain subservient. This is followed by the development of decadence in the privelidged resulting in absurdities and arrogance from fools drunk on power and privelidge.
Any system (such as any political economic system) requiring survival, maintenance, and entertainment to be sustained and through enculturating more people into its ideology is already corrupt. You don't have to go any further. The goals of society are a repetitive absurdity (survival, maintenance, entertainment). The means of society's reproduction is through reproducing more people who will suffer and are used to keep it going. The best way to rebel against the system is to stop having children and stop thinking there is a better system, or even a way-of-life that is best. No, all of it is exposing new people to suffering and exploitation of the very system that they will need to sustain them. Just stop all systems in one generation..stop having kids.None of it needs to continue.. When people think of the economy in such utilitarian terms, I just think of how people are just points of data to be manipulated to keep the whole thing going. "A high tide raises all boats" is a laughable farce. Let us voluntarily give up this system that entraps all and tells them its for THEIR benefit. Let's come together to dissolve all future wants and needs by simply not having more people. You may be fooled into thinking your job is fun, useful, good, enriching..but its not. That is part of the whole f'rkn enculturated tall tale. Buy it. Drink the Kool-Aid, keep making more people to run the system and be data points and fooling them into thinking that they are being enriched by it.
Just a knee-jerk reaction brought on by discussions I’ve had here before where certain people assumed everything I stated was only in reference to the US.
As for the over/under reacting question. I think it’s extremely important to pay attention to the global implications of prolonged lockdown - especially for less developed countries who simply don’t have the economic fluidity to sustain the kind of blows nations like France, UK, Germany, South Korea and China can.
It’s a matter of picking the best of several bad choices - each one carries an element of randomness too.
At the extremes - which are useful to consider - letting the virus run rampant is estimated to cause 100 million deaths in the year (with a large margin of error). That would create herd immunity and things would stabilize at that terrible cost. The other extreme is almost continual lockdowns for 12-18 months to develop a vaccine and stave off the worst effects, which may cause so much damage to developing countries that the death toll may surpass 100 million in the long term.
I’ve been looking for papers/articles written by experts in BOTH economics and virology ... not much luck though. I guess they’re not exactly two fields of interested that dovetail too often except in terms of pharmacology and sales :(
Right.
There is no compelling medical case for taking extraordinary public measures.
So, what is the political agenda?
I know you're probably just a crazy person, but, a 10% fatality rate in Italy isn't a compelling medical reason?
Quoting I like sushi
What compounds the issue is that the social consequences are difficult to predict absent lockdown measures. Will people panic and self-quarantine? How many of the working population will fall significantly ill? How will your medical system and the people working in it react to constant overload?
It's always been there, but this event exposes how shallow that deference is: the language of 'personal responsibility', which is the go-to strategy when allowing the poor to suffer and die despite structural inequality, is inadequate here. The new, developing language is instead that of 'necessary sacrifice', which is nowhere near as empowering and makes obvious just how much the rich and their unthinking shills are all too happy to trade people for money and its promise.
In a way yes.
But those emergency reserves are exactly for these kind of events: when there is an acute shortage because of a sudden crisis and you cannot wait for six months.
To anticipate possible crises is a thing what the government ought to do. Unfortunately this kind of thinking is usually confined to the armed forces, which optimally should be in peacetime preparing for war. Other sectors, like the health care sector typically understand the importance, but don't do anything to prepare for these kinds of events. Too expensive!
It looks as though, as I said before, that nature is going to reduce the size of the population for us now. Also that this pandemic will shine a light on the corrupt practices hidden behind the cool aid.
I agree, the less developed countries are in for a rough ride for a few years. They are helpless and the West will not be in a position to help. Perhaps China will.
But in reality nothing anyone does is going to prevent this. Whether wealthy countries self isolate or not, it will not make any difference in the poorer countries, they are doomed regardless.
I don't see a problem with wealthy countries printing money, because this crisis will not result in uncontrollable inflation due to the way in which the economy is in life support. I can't comment on what will happen afterwards, hopefully people will realise that money is not the The be all and end all. The fact that real things and lives have been given a monetary value may have to change.
Do you think that if 1 in every 5 people in the general population requires hospital care, all at the same time, the hospitals can cope? That is not a realistic number. What kind of a time span do you spread that projection over?
The whole point is that CV brings into sharp relief for anyone with a pulse how utterly vacuous this is. Profits won't help us here. Profits were the first thing to go, recognized by everyone to be the most useless, superfluous foam atop the real wave that is society. Everyone who spouted the propaganda that value is generated from the top (therefore we can't tax them!), saw the aristocrats in their naked parasitism as soon as the bottom fell away. In fact it's worse than this - it was the profit drive that enabled this catastrophe to be as catastrophic as it has been, insofar as it has utterly diminished the capacities of societies to respond in ways that did not multiply its effects and impact the poor, old, and sick the hardest. There's no need to play devil's advocate. One just has to have a set of lungs and a pair of eyes.
Edit: actually, it gets even worse than this. Even if, against all credulity, profit could be said to be beneficial, the question that ought to be ringing in everyone's ears is: where the fuck is it? Boeing made billions in profits in the years leading up to this (last year excepted, thanks to their disastrous 737 MAX debacles, itself a result of capitalism working as expected), yet barely a few weeks in they're getting bailed out by public funds to the tune of even more billions. Maybe Boeing should just get another fucking job, as everyone tells the poor. But of course the profits are in the hands of shareholders, who, having stashed them in the Caymans, couldn't give less fucks if they tried. Nationalize Boeing, now.
That's a significant percentage, are you sure it's that high? Many don't even suffer symptoms, and of those, most do not require hospitalization. But the hospitals can only handle a very small portion of the overall population at a time. What is there, one hospital with several hundred beds for every couple million people?
The language is of wartime; 'frontline' 'volunteers', factories being 'turned over' to 'new essential uses' 'brave sacrifice'... and specifically, the language of WW1.
'Blitz spirit!'
Here in la France 'nous sommes en guerre', as macron has repeatedly stated.
I do. It can be lessened by loosening the constriction on the global economy sooner rather than later. Meaning don’t ‘play safe’ to save our own consider the world at large.
I gave too extreme examples. There should be an area where both extremes are mitigated for everyone’s benefit. The issue still remains how to judge the limits of that area and make reasonable predictions.
Maybe a mere a 3-4 million will die this year of the virus due to extreme measures taken. Then ... the economic down turn causes massive worldwide poverty which essentially kills hundreds of millions over the following year. That simply doesn’t seem like either a morally or logically robust stance to take.
I really want to see virologists and world economists bringing this to the forefront of public discussion more quickly or we could inflict a greater loss of human life than is necessary. Whatever happens it’s a tough thing and I hope we don’t avoid measuring the value of individual human lives against each other on such a scale in favour of avoiding the burden for doctors and nurses on a potentially much smaller scale.
The concern I have being the locality of the problem both temporally and physically. We don’t want doctors and nurses to decide who lives and who dies at all ... but if they are forced into such decisions and down the line save many many more lives by allowing countries to run moe smoothly it would be an unfortunate burden I’m sure they’d be willing to carry.
Let’s just not merely ‘hope’ about this. Hard decisions shouldn’t be avoided regardless of how awful they are. Avoiding such things will only cause more harm down the line. I guess that is the ultimate test for humanity today more than ever in our minuscule history on this Earth.
Not sure how one or the other is more logical. As to the moral question: how certain so the negative consequences in the future have to be to justify having more people die right now? Wouldn't the moral choice be to save as many as you can now and then also save as many as you can later?
I don't know if it has as much to do with expense as it does the inability to accurately predict the type of crisis that might arise. It would have taken a crystal ball for someone to have predicted we'd need 1000s of respirators and whoever predicted it would never have been able to convince Congress to actually make the purchase and then store the respirators in a warehouse somewhere for decades until some novel virus emerged. In fact, if someone had made that prediction, I wouldn't think of them as much a prophet as I would think they were a suspect.
At any rate, for things somewhat predictable, like a sudden need for additional petroleum, the US does have a storage of it: https://www.energy.gov/fe/services/petroleum-reserves/strategic-petroleum-reserve/releasing-oil-spr. I remember during Hurricane Katrina when it knocked out the main refinery in New Orleans, amounts were released.
So now we're back to class warfare? The old standby to politicize the situation and polarize it. Maybe it'll work in shutting people up who might wish to argue that we have to look at the economic consequences to decisions we make regarding dictating public safety. As I've noted, we consistently make similar decisions in all other types of contexts, which include whether we wish to dig underground tunnels at every intersection to allow pedestrians to safely pass under or whether we just paint some warning lines on the road to let folks know a pedestrian might be walking in front of a car.
The universal protection is that which you afford yourself, meaning the person who chooses not to cross the road won't get hit by a car. Fortunately we have a government that is not willing to just allow folks to get run over and continuously blame the pedestrians, so they paint the lines and try to warn motorists, but they don't dig tunnels and pedestrian bridges except in the most unusual circumstances, and they don't simply shut down the intersection. I'd suggest the decisions they make are based upon the cost of interfering with commerce and the cost of being able to have sufficient money to build roads, with an actuary being able to tell you how many lives each safety option will likely cause you. We paint lines for $500 and 5 lives will be lost. We dig a tunnel for $500,000 and 0 lives will be lost. Must we now dig tunnels at every intersection?
And this is not the rich versus the poor. It's the young versus the old. The economic cost of the shut down, whether you agree with it or not, will affect everyone who works and now doesn't. The idea that the rich are the most fidgety ones during this crisis because they see their portfolios taking a hit ignores where the real pain is being felt, and that is by those who can't pay their rent. The economy will rebound, and I think most investors know that, but that's much harder to explain to someone who can't pay his basic sustenance bills right now.
So what I'm suggesting isn't just to let the old folks die, but it's to place a higher burden on the old to protect themselves, and it's to temper their protection by governmental mandates and expenditures in the same way we do it in other contexts. That's not cold hearted. It's just reality.
This goes right back to the moral hypotheticals I’ve asked before. The issue is do you think it worthy saving one person today causing one million to die tomorrow, or saving one million today so that only one dies tomorrow.
Of course reality is FAR more complicated and unpredictable than that. Morally it is my position not to shirk away from uncomfortable questions and resolve problems based on one particular universal rule.
Where is the line between willful negligence and ‘crossing that bridge when we come to it’? I don’t know. I think it’s worth asking that question for obvious reasons though.
Quoting Hanover
I'll let this abyss of moral excreta speak for itself.
And no Hano, it's not 'back to' class warfare. It's never been anything but class warfare.
I think, and my son, who has the virus tells me, that the real real pain is being felt by those who struggle to breathe. But fuck you too.
I made a thread about the moral standing of future people a while ago, but unfortunately (for me) it didn't get any traction. I think that, as our capabilities and the complexity of our societies increase, we need to increasingly think about how the moral value of a person, or possible person, changes the farther away in time from us they are.
"if the U.S. government can finance $4.5 trillion in quantitative easing, it can absorb the cost of forgoing student and other debt. And for private lenders, only bad loans need be wiped out. Much of what would be written off are accruals, late charges and penalties on loans gone bad. It actually subsidizes bad lending to leave them in place. In the past, the politically powerful financial sector has blocked a write-down. Until now, the basic ethic of most of us has been that debts must be repaid. But it is time to recognize that most debts now cannot be paid — through no real fault of the debtors in the face of today’s economic disaster."
I'm sorry to hear about your son. I truly am. Whether he is in need of a respirator and cannot get one or whether he isn't in need at all, I don't know, but such questions are relevant, as the suggestion is that if we were to allow a greater spread of the disease, he would be without due to lack of resources.
Whether the ultimate consequence of someone being unable to pay rent will be greater than the ultimate consequence to your son, I don't know. I do know I have no desire to discuss the personal healthcare of your family member, but we certainly can if you want to, but expect the conversation to be objective, regardless of what outbursts you wish to make. It would sort of like me telling you, or anyone, to fuck off for the death of my loved one who was struck by a car because I objected to some reasonable limitation to the amount of money the government was willing to spend on pedestrian tunnels.
Probably because Italy has about a third of all deaths with a CFR of over 10%, followed by Spain, where it is about 9%
And 4.9% here in the UK, where a 21 year old with no apparent health issues died.
This might explain why some countries have much higher mortality rates. A greater proportion of those who are infected are older.
That, or testing is more limited, only discovering the more severe cases, which are usually older patients.
We won't really know until the data has been thoroughly analyzed in a few years.
I agree about there needing to be more consideration & responsibility in regards to government money in responding to this.
Each year are new viruses that nobody has built immunity to yet. And each year the vast majority survive, though unfortunately some - especially those with pre-existing health problems - die. It’s not all that different. They keep saying it’s more contagious but the numbers don’t add up.
In the US:
+59,000 died from flu
-560 from COVID-19
Not really. You've taken it out of context and ignored just basic common sense. As I noted:
Quoting Hanover
I've clearly indicated the societal duty to protect others, but that doesn't absolve your duty to care for yourself. Are you suggesting that those in greater danger should not take greater precautions, or have you just assumed the tact of others here in thinking that your indignation has persuasive power or, as seems more likely, it will allow you to just recite your position in the echo chamber you're trying to create?
Taking a step back here, I really don't want to just exchange barbs. It'll just predictably result in our just ignoring each other. I fully appreciate this is real and there is emotion here, and maybe we disagree over whether it's even appropriate to consider this in the abstract. I really do believe we make public safety decisions based upon amount of resources every day in all sorts of contexts. If what you're saying is that my analogies to other contexts aren't applicable, I'm open to reconsidering what I've said as it applies to the coronavirus context. But, if what you're saying is that you reject outright the concept that safety measures can ever be limited by preservation of resources issues, then I just think you're wrong, and I can't just accept your comments in an effort to play nice and get along well with others.
Part of the agenda for the overreaction may be financial & partly to see how far people will let go of their constitutional rights - like right to assembly, right to not be spied on, right to not be killed - stuff like that.
President Obama gives himself permission to kill. ... to all persons and kill them without any due process whatsoever... using drones
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/president-obama-gives-himself-permission-to-kill
California cops are now using drones to enforce coronavirus lockdown March 22, 2020
https://thedronegirl.com/2020/03/22/coronavirus-lockdown/
That's simply wrong. We knew a pandemic would hit us sometime. What medical equipment would be needed was easy to see for the professionals.
The medical community was for a very long time saying over and over again that a pandemic was going to happen. Just check yourself (if you bother) how many have said "It's not about if, but when. Heck, I've heard it all my life as my father is a professor of virology, so the argument of nobody could have predicted this is utterly false and nonsense!
Quoting Hanover
Sorry, but this just shows your ignorance about how strategic reserves work.
They are NOT storaged into a bunker dig into a mountain and stacked there not to be touched until a crisis happens and then opened. It's not that way. First of all, things like grain and even those protection gear couldn't be storaged for decades as they do have a limited shelf life. Everything has a limited shelf life. No, the way you do it is to have your ordinary warehouses store the grain / oil whatever and basically keep the reserves always on their books whereas the actual resources and equipment is sold normally. It's basically an agreement with the government with the logistics companies that this amount of this and that will always be in storage.
Michael, how is your mother? Hope she's good.
I think that is the prime motivation as well.
The question I'm asking is what is the cost burden of a complete lock down versus other lesser forms of quarantine and then seeing what the loss of life is based upon each of those options and from there deciding which option to choose.
To do otherwise would demand no one can leave their homes and all deliveries be made by guys in hazmat suits. If we're serious about this thing and we really had this absolutist view that human life be preserved regardless of cost, we'd do that, and it'd all be done. Maybe doing nothing makes sense as well. I'm willing to look at the numbers.
Sure, it feels disgusting, but we do it all the time in other contexts and it's part of reality. We send kids off to war with an understanding that x number of deaths will result in preferred outcome y.
Lol this rules :up:
Think about the proportion of people in India that live hand to mouth losing what minute income they can scrape together every day. Europe, North America and several Eastern countries can afford to take larger blows with less long term problems than somewhere like Brasil, Indonesia, Philippines or Nigeria where the gap between rich and poor (per person) is a gaping chasm in comparison.
I’d have to say that willfully not looking too far ahead to avoid guilt isn’t something I’d like to aspire to. We’re human though so I cannot pretend we’re limitless and some avoidance is necessary for day-to-day ‘(in)sanity’.
Simply put, if saving 3 people today would with 100% certainty cause 10,000 to die next year my decision would be easy enough if I was making the choice. The reality is MUCH messier though, so I’d probably gamble on the more immediate good if the odds and consequences were deemed ‘reasonable’ by my personal judgement. For me the really ‘moral’ decision is never an ‘easy’ decision. I don’t honestly think many of us take on (by choice or force of circumstance) many - if any - seriously difficult decisions. Self preservation involves ‘mental’ as much as ‘physical’ health.
I want to know more and hear more about the economic implications by experts with a foot in both fields of concern. At least there are discussions going on between experts in both fields so maybe together they can help each other enough to offer balanced advice to governments.
Successful psyop.
Legislation granting emergency powers.
Currency reset.
Most people are slow on the uptake.
Dr. Fauci mentioned that we don't know how it's going to effect the rest of the US. Some areas might be like Germany where it's not bad. Other places could experience things like what's happening in NY or Washington. After it's over we can look back and see what made sense and what didn't, but we'll be doing that with information we don't have now.
Wash your hands don't touch your face stand away from other people,
Frank
Incidentally this is also why your question about car deaths misses the point. The healthcare industry can cope with that loss of life. It can't cope with a pandemic, hence the need to flatten the curve.
The ultimate question is how many people can have their suffering reduced or death averted, regardless of how that can be accomplished (e.g. by having adequate hospital beds, having fewer businesses open for the spreading of a virus, or by having additional highway safety protections to reduce highway deaths), and that question will come down to cost and how much we as a society are willing to invest in those life saving measures.
At some point I just think the other posters here are going to have to admit there is no bright line rule that states we are willing to bear any financial cost to save a single life, but that the question is how much we will financially bear to save a life. Once we admit the latter, we need to take out our calculators and start doing the math, regardless of how offensive that feels.
As a general principle, why are we required to see through a plan just because it seemed reasonable at the time but not now? I get that it would should stubborn resolve, but that's not always a good reason to do things.
It's not clear that what we're doing is unreasonable. It's not clear that another path would be better. Changing canoes in midstream will definitely cause mass confusion. The principle is to base your decisions as best you can on what you know. Applying this principle, we should stay the course we're on.
Indeed. As usual, it is advantageous to be in a rich country where folks can afford to find mass graves distasteful. In such places as those, it's going to be, get it, recover or die without medical assistance, for most people.
Nice to hear. And hope everything goes fine with her husband too.
I was referring to the economic fallout due to lockdowns potentially killing millions more than the virus itself. The better off countries can take the economic hit much better than others. So my point was a worry about prolonging lockdowns to save peoples lives in developed countries being a possible cause of deaths in less developed countries simply due to the economic downturn not the virus itself.
I’ve seen precious little discussion on the combined issues of this in terms of the global effects - maybe because experts in both fields don’t exist.
Yeah they do. They just don't admit it
And if you're not American, you don't have anything like a federal government to help you or not, so what are you complaining about?
How would that happen? I can see authorities wanting poor folk to sit home and starve. I can see how us not buying so many pairs of jeans can put poor people out of work, and perhaps the resulting unrest might kill people. I can't see it being comparable numbers though. I think the dependencies are nearly all in the other direction "I can't live without my arabica coffee".
For the record, I don't own a second home nor do I own a single diamond. I might have a watch of small value in a drawer somewhere, so I have no self-interest here.
No, I'm not in favor of UBI because I don't think things will be better off offering a segment of the population a disincentive to work and I don't think removing incentives from those who seek them will result in an overall better society on any number of levels.
Your question is an interesting one though because it assumes an open lack of concern for others on the part of the conservative right. I fully understand that you believe that the policies of the right serve no purpose other than to promote the rich (despite the fact that many are far from rich), but if I were to believe that UBI would make us all better off (and what I think is of value might vary from you), then of course I would be in favor of it. I just don't think it would.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/07/820-million-starving-people-number-growing/
https://www.creditdonkey.com/world-hunger-statistics.html
If people don’t have money they can’t grow/buy food. They starve to death or lose their homes/education.
If the lockdown goes on and on then literally millions more are likely to starve to death not to mention those that are simply pushed below the poverty line. Basically I’m worried that all developing countries will be pushed back nullifying the progress of the past few decades and leading to mass starvation and then the inevitable strain poverty puts on the natural environment.
Your not alone in asking this question sadly. It needs addressing more closely I feel.
I don't believe money comes from trees, so the lack of work in a society will result in its eventual failure. Would it be better in a hunter gatherer society for everyone to sit around and bullshit all day instead of hunting and gathering, sure, until dinner time. Same thing for our society, just bigger scale.
But the money isn't coming from trees. It's coming from the government, which in turn is coming from tax payers who would have spent that money at fast food restaurants but are now paying it in additional tax. So there's no creation of money here, just a redistribution of existing money.
What does it matter if the money goes from me to the government to the newly unemployed rather than from me to McDonalds to their employees? It might actually be that less money is being spent as this theoretical UBI (although not really universal, just to former fast food employees) can be capped at some minimum wage.
But I'm unique and delicate, so a snowflake I'll be.
Quoting Baden
I like this post, not because I necessarily agree with it, but it's filled with optimism, maybe even the reckless optimism that defines me. It could be I'm being played, though, and you're just saying to me what you know I'll embrace, but whatever, I applaud that then, your ability to figure out your audience and appeal to it, even if it's comprised only of me.
Let me share something of no interest to you, my personal philosophy of tracht gut, vet zein gut, Yiddish for think good and it will be good. I actually believe that, so, yes, I will go with what you said awhile, and everything will be just fine.
Of course, it also leads me to say things like stop all the restrictions and everything will also be okay.
The government isn't producing. It's taxing the producers. If the producers are having their money redistributed, they are losing their incentive to produce and then the government will have less and less to dole out to the lazy and worthless who choose to piss their days away philosophizing.
FYI: everyone in hunter gather societies actually have a lot of time to sit around and bullshit. Far more than us fools on the capitalist hamster wheel.
I am aware of this, having been raised in the jungle as a hunter gatherer myself, only to be rescued by missionaries and forced into hours of tedious labor so that I could appreciate the joys of hard work. True story, except for the part of ever having been raised a hunter gatherer.
So a (worldwide) tax increase of $6,577,200,000, with $14,498,800,000 that can now be spent/invested elsewhere.
And you think that's going to introduce economic problems that will cause more suffering than is saved by McDonalds' employees not having to work?
Quoting Tom Inglesby - MD, Professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
I don't think McDonald's, despite having delicious sandwiches, fuels the economic engine of my great nation. So yes, Uncle Sam could give the hard workers of Mickey Dees a proverbial lottery ticket winning and tell them they no longer need to work and they could then do whatever it is they had planned to do but for their prior McDonald's obligations and none of would see any appreciable difference before or after other than no one will be there to stir us up our artificially flavored milkshakes. Do that to enough people and businesses, and yes, we will have a problem. The more we do it, the bigger the problem.
The takeaway might be that the pursuit of well-being might possibly be better than the pursuit we are trained for by missionaries or whoever.
Quoting I like sushi
Let's look then.
The economy as fully functional and without lockdown results in 9 million deaths from starvation per year. It's a question as to whether the economy not functioning would be worse or better. The story we tell ourselves is that our wealth trickles down to these poor and starving people. And if the trickle stops, more will starve. I'm questioning that.
Quoting boethius
Today, March 24th:
Quoting Bloomber news
(use noscript with firefox to defeat paywall, only epistemologicaly of course )
COVID-19: Further Evidence that the Virus Originated in the US
[i]”Japanese and Taiwanese epidemiologists and pharmacologists have determined that the new coronavirus could have originated in the US since that country is the only one known to have all five types – from which all others must have descended. Wuhan in China has only one of those types, rendering it in analogy as a kind of “branch” which cannot exist by itself but must have grown from a “tree”...
It would seem the only possibility for origination would be the US because only that country has the “tree trunk” of all the varieties. And it may therefore be true that the original source of the COVID-19 virus was the US military bio-warfare lab at Fort Detrick. This would not be a surprise, given that the CDC completely shut down Fort Detrick, but also because, as I related in an earlier article, between 2005 and 2012 the US had experienced 1,059 events where pathogens had been either stolen or escaped from American bio-labs during the prior ten years.“[/i]
https://www.globalresearch.ca/covid-19-further-evidence-virus-originated-us/5706078
That's not how viruses work.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
Quoting Michael [bold mine]
That same day:
Quoting Andrew M
Today it is March 26, 2020 in the United States. The US has just passed China in the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19.
As @ssu pointed out, the above article was obsolete from the moment it was written. The US already was the epicenter and the "suggested" overtaking of China in terms of the actual number of infections had already passed.
Welcome to the reality of hidden exponential growth. In three more days, the US will have at least 200,000 confirmed cases. (And, in reality, already has that many cases.)
80%-90% of the population in your state or country needs to go into home self-isolation immediately and for at least four weeks. You won't get a second chance on this.
Your political leaders have failed to understand the absolute severity of this pandemic. Step up and tell your friends, family and coworkers that it is time to go into self-isolation now. New Zealand has already gone into lockdown and they have only 283 confirmed cases (and no deaths) as of today. How many cases does your state (US) or country have?
Wrong.
Your economy is a service based economy. Period. Please understand it. McDonalds is important.
Begs the question: Who is still living normally, going out with friends and not taking any other measures than not shaking hands on the forum?
I'm just waiting when our dear neighbor Sweden will change it's policy and quarantine Stockholm. I think there the only Nordic country with schools open etc. and going with herd "immunity".
Wrong. The bankruptcy of McDonalds would not have a significant impact on the US economy. Nice graph showing the significance of the entire services sector, as if that's what we were talking about.
Bullshit.
Bankruptcy of one of the most successful franchising companies operating in well over 100 countries would be a big issue. And if you think a company like McDonalds isn't important, what company you think would be then? The one you have in your stock portfolio? GM isn't in the position as it used to be, you know.
And yes, we are talking about the service sector. It was the sector that didn't suffer from the Great Recession so much and did provide work when a sector like construction collapsed.
I calculate about 150,000. But it's going to be bad one way or the other.
You're certainly passionate about nothing we were taking about. But no, the demise of McDonald's wouldn't have far reaching consequences to the US economy. Not sure why we're talking about GM now or my stock portfolio either.
We should have done this a long time ago!
Assuming you think clean waterways are better than people using waterways because you have some anti-human bias. For some reason people think crowds are ugly and emptiness is pretty. Maybe because it's more rare or maybe because people are self loathing. I celebrate humanity myself.
By peeing in a Venitian canal?
Definitely we agree here.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
When people are structurally placed on the brink; i.e. precarious living as a form of social control, then indeed at any given moment it seems people need to live to die, later.
The problem we are witnessing in the United States is that people need to die now to die later. And all the kings men and all the kings horses can't put the propaganda back together again.
The "tension", previous to this crisis, seemed to be between the elites and the masses of poor that might "break free" at any moment, do something "revolutionary" like, oh I don't know, just go and start occupying things or something. Obviously, the problems that arise from poverty are solved by more poverty, at least a little while.
Ultimately a society that weakens itself to keep up an elite and keep down the poor and "the ethnics" is simply not able to withstand a real crisis. Yes, serfs of days past might depend on a corrupt liege to at least keep a fierce enemy with a penchant for genocidal at bay, and reason things just have to be this way, but if that same corrupt liege appoints corrupt and incompetent generals and admirals and taxes the poor into malnutrition, when the enemy is breaching the gates and streaming through the streets, this theoretical interdependence is no longer relevant.
True, this isn't the largest calamity that can be imagined (not a literal nuclear strike or environmentalists seizing power in a surprise Bolshevik-Nazi cultural-Marxist coup and immediately mandating large bonfires of all capital equipment and a "back to the woods, hunter-gathering collectivist suicide pact" to satisfy the most viscous of id's in the most extreme of all identity politics: self reliance) but rather the societies' I am referring to do not break due to facing something truly great, rather a fairly normal tempest sinks faster a ship already sinking. When the keel is rotten, new paint only lasts so long to keep things afloat. When the water pours over, and cold grips the heart, the time to fix the organizational problems that led to the crisis ... well, that boat has sailed.
For, it is not just coronovirus. The world in general, and the post-WWII Breton-Woods pax Americana in particular, has already lot's of problems, and it is within this context that the US has already even more problems.
And it is not simply Trump. Advancing Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton was already a sign that the American elite are no longer able to replace themselves cognitively. Advancing Biden clearly shows the disease is terminal.
The first parallel geopolitical analysts had when it was clear "things would be bad" is that this maybe the US's Chernobyl. A large and costly crisis in itself, yes, but more importantly a fatal blow to the faith that underpins the entire system. The virus pops to many illusion in too short a time. It is a "the invisible hand has no clothes" moment.
Future generations will say the Soviet Union fell due to an insane ideology detached from reality unable to fulfill its self appointed prophesy, and so too the USA.
Let's see then on next Monday what the figures are. (Let's see who got closer! :death: )
What I suspect that at some point Trump will get angry at the death rate being told in the news and somewhere down the line the statistics will be not accurate (as in Iran).
I called Trump a danger 3 years ago because we all knew the egotistical fuck can't handle a crisis (except for PR, gotta hand him that):
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/26121
Don't confuse this with schadenfreude but an honest attempt at bluntly ramming home the point how utterly fucked the US is and how inept its administration is. And how pathetically predictable.
Ok. But you defended us against the troll, so you're excellent.
Trump just tells his crazy fairy tales of packed churches in Easter, yet the nation isn't him, not even the government is him. The political leadership handling this issue is more with the governors of the various states I would say.
Secondly I don't think that by relaxing the social distancing measures now imposed by most countries, the depth of the recession would be reduced. We don't know yet how far the health crisis will go and as it is an exponential contagion, halting that growth will mitigate the worst effects of the rapid increase in infection. This is the reason why these countries have adopted these measures. Presumably their governments have been advised by specialists as to how bad it could be without action.
The only country we have as an example which has not imposed social isolation is Iran, but we don't have accurate figures coming out of Iran. Perhaps some reports will emerge soon as to how it has affected their economy.
And it's most definitely in the right thread. An important part of why Corona is as bad as it is, is trump not listening to advisors and in fact communicating the totally opposite of what he should've been doing in order to get Average Joe prepared.
Nice sarcasm on the Nostradamus BTW.
There's just 1 missing detail in this, which is that recession won't be less because you end up in the same situation of hospitals (even more) overrun, lot's of bad stories (from health care workers, from people who lose a loved one), and demand from the people that politicians do something.
However, in theory, you could just lift the quarantine and have that "pile of dead bodies in the corner" as Bill Gates says. Notice that he's saying to his follow oligarchs why you "can't" just lift the quarantine, which obviously you can, what's left unsaid is that the mechanism of why you "can't" is because other people care about those dead bodies; he's not telling his fellow oligarchs why you "shouldn't" have a pile of dead bodies, just that, for circumstances out of their control, he's trying to explain why they really can't (broken cookie syndrome vis-a-vis the economy).
I add this precision, because lot's of people arguing for lifting the quarantine are genuinely arguing for the pile of dead bodies and genuinely don't understand why people have a problem with that.
Notice, in Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick now famous interview he addresses what he perceives as the obvious criticism when he says "And I want to live smart and see through this" because the obvious rebuttal in his mind is "you're old, aren't you worried" to which he has a perfectly good answer with "I won't have buyers remorse here, I'll use my wealth to protect myself personally; obviously". He follows this thought immediately with "but I don’t want the whole country to be sacrificed" to cut off the other followup question of "you really ready to sacrifice all the other grandparents you're talking about, if you're not actually talking about yourself". For, it's you sacrificing the country, it's you destroying something not him!
At no point in the interview does he address people losing their grandparents unnecessarily, he insists the grandparents themselves are asking to bravely face death. Why? because he's clearly a psychopath: attributing his fearlessness in the face of the virus to every other grandparent (creating a noble "great generation" in the mind), while simultaneously bragging about his ability to use his "smarts" to avoid getting the virus; i.e. he's emotionally manipulating people to want to get the virus while displaying his ability to manipulate his own environment to not get the virus.
That’s just untrue. No one has ever said nor implied such an idea, and such a dangerous straw man is an incitement to violence.
The argument is that we can take precautions—social distancing, hygiene, testing and protecting vulnerable populations—without having to end the livelihoods and enterprises of people throughout the globe. We certainly don’t need to do it based on the speculations and models of people who overestimate their ability to tell the future.
Me: Imagine corona virus is a bunch of Mexican immigrants. Now what do you need to stop them?
Nobrainnocry: A wall?
Me: Yes! A huuuuuuge wall. Now, do you take that wall down just after putting it up?
Nobrainnocry Damn, no! The rapey murderers would be pouring in again like flies.
Me: Right, you leave it there until...
Nobrainnocry: Until...?
Me: Take your time...
Nobrainnocry: Until you multiplee nuke Mexico and wipe enough of the varmints out so there's hardly a body left to come in?
Me: Exactly! Now, see, the wall is called a lockdown. And the nuke is a strategy called the hammer and we're going to beat corona like the nasty immigrant virus it truly is. God bless 'Murica.
Nobrainnocry: Whooopeee!
Too easy. :halo:
I backup my assertion with explaining a high-profile argument for the pile of dead bodies.
Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick, and many on the internet and beyond, are exactly arguing for the pile of dead bodies.
Is an argument for "let's have a pile of dead bodies" in no uncertain terms.
But I'm glad you're not taking such a position, I'm sure you'll go ahead and educate yourself on the science of this issue and realize all the governments are doing the same thing for a reason: the deaths from the pandemic are simply way higher than indirect harm to small business and jobs for a significant amount of time. People who lose their business can survive (likely only with government handouts and free retraining and free health-care, yes) but can survive and go on to do something else; relatively few would actually die from the loss of livelihood (when people lose their livelihood due to "technology disruption" or "triple A junk mortgages blowing up the financial system" it's just "creative destruction", nothing to lament, no reason to keep those jobs around because people "bounce back", and those that don't aren't the general rule). One small business bankruptcy or livelihood gone does not equal one death, whereas one death from the virus does equal one death; this is the basic math you are missing; while "affected individuals" are larger in magnitude in the economic category, they are not equal to deaths.
Prove it wrong LOGICALLY rather than just engage in ad hominem attack - if you can. Prove the virus did not originate in the US. I’d love to hear a good argument.
Don’t just claim something is wrong without factually backing it up.
“...Virologist and pharmacologist who performed a long and detailed search for the source of the virus. He spends the first part of the video explaining the various haplotypes (varieties, if you will), and explains how they are related to each other, how one must have come before another, and how one type derived from another....
One of his main points is that the type infecting Taiwan exists only in Australia and the US and, since Taiwan was not infected by Australians, the infection in Taiwan could have come only from the US.
The basic logic is that the geographical location with the greatest diversity of virus strains must be the original source because a single strain cannot emerge from nothing. He demonstrated that only the US has all the five known strains of the virus (while Wuhan and most of China have only one, as do Taiwan and South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam, Singapore, and England, Belgium and Germany), constituting a thesis that the haplotypes in other nations may have originated in the US.”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/china-coronavirus-shocking-update/5705196
“The study found that 93 samples received contained 58 haplotypes. The haplotypes of patients from the South China seafood market were related to H1, while the more ancient gene types H3, H13, and H38 were from outside the South China seafood market.”
https://cntechpost.com/2020/03/08/behind-the-suspected-mutation-of-covid-19/
He’s arguing he’s willing to take a chance with his own health and survival, and he, like anyone else, can take proactive steps to do just that. This is the spirit of people who aren’t gripped by an incessant need for safety and coddling.
You are unable to peer through the tyranny of uncertainty to any foreseeable future. All you have is your math, which doesn’t even require you to look up from your desk for any given amount of time.
Yes, definitely is far gone into myth of American exceptionalism and doesn't understand the situation. I agree with you there.
However, in NOS4A2's defense, it's really difficult to understand the political significance of the virus, that people are unlikely to simply continue as normal as fast as possible. It is the change of psychology, both within the US and how the world views the US during this situation, that is of historic significance.
It is very tempting to have the fallback position of the friendly platitude "we've always had pandemics", which is true, but that is not really a comforting historical parallel, as pandemics have nearly always brought profound social and political change; the very thing the right in America fear most. So it is quite understandable that denial is preferred over inconvenient truths.
The logical implication of a large group of people playing Russian roulette, even with a few dozen chambers, is a pile of dead bodies.
You cannot both simultaneously advocate society risk all these people's lives (without a probability of death it is not "taking a chance" as you say) and deny those odds on a large scale won't result in a pile of dead bodies. It is intrinsic to the concept.
You could argue there is no risk and therefore "taking the chance" is not actually taking a chance it's just being strong and not being "gripped by an incessant need for safety and coddling". However, the problem with such an argument is that bodies piling up say otherwise; or, rather, they would say otherwise if their mouths weren't frozen shut lying in the back of a refrigerated truck.
Places with most tourists and business links around the World will be first hit and that has seemed to happen to North Italy and New York. Of course now would be the time to prepare for the places that haven't been hit. But except New Zealand, it's typically that the economy is put into first place.
For New York I think 5th of March was when they lost containment:
When you don't have the connection to travel and cannot make the path of the infection, then only thing is "flattening the curve". Cuomo declared state of Emergency two days later. But I guess shelter-in orders came only later (24th of March).
Quoting Benkei
Likely even worse was that we didn't learn from the SARS and the Ebola outbreaks that an international effort and coordination in the prevention would have been the best case. Hopefully after this pandemic more resources go into prevention of outbreaks. But then only when people see how bad it can be do they take it seriously.
Quoting Benkei
:razz:
First, there isn't a debate. 'Opening for business' before the spread is contained will kill the economy. Anyone who thinks otherwise has no idea how an economy works, and is arguing, more so than those who would see this virus contained, that the economy ought to be shuttered even more than it currently is. You're a fucking idiot by even your own standard.
Second, a declaration by elites that the economy is in fact open in the midst of rising numbers of infection and death will be met by strikes so crippling that again, the precious economy will be murdered anyway. The strikes happening in Italy are but a premonition of what will pass. Nobody not in an armchair is willing to die for the rich - die for the Dow, as they say - and workers will walk off the job long before they begin to serve burritos at your local tex-mex.
Corollary: in light of the above, those who think there really is a debate are, regardless of intention, effectively arguing both that the economy ought to be crippled to the largest possible extent, and that more people ought to die than necessary. The worst possible outcome.
I know of no other way to celebrate. We're not all professional party planners like you.
"Few in the protective equipment industry are surprised by the shortages, because they’ve been predicted for years. In 2005, the George W. Bush administration called for the coordination of domestic production and stockpiling of protective gear in preparation for pandemic influenza. In 2006, Congress approved funds to add protective gear to a national strategic stockpile — among other things, the stockpile collected 52 million surgical face masks and 104 million N95 respirator masks.
But about 100 million masks in the stockpile were deployed in 2009 in the fight against the H1N1 flu pandemic, and the government never bothered to replace them. This month, Alex Azar, secretary of health and human services, testified that there are only about 40 million masks in the stockpile — around 1 percent of the projected national need."
https://nyti.ms/2QKKZn0
The poorest live of the refuse of others. They earn a few dollars a day from menial work. That work has already stopped.
9 million now could increase quite easily to over 100 million when you consider the countries I’ve mentioned. 7% unemployed (70+ million). 9 million global in one year could easily turn into 10+ million in one year in India alone. Then there is next year where lockdowns may well still be in effect in some areas and even if they’re not the economy will have taken such a hit that the death toll due to starvation, although receding, will still exceed 9 million.
I think everyone is responsible. We cannot expect less developed countries to deal with this like other countries (where poverty is a far more serious issue).
Some articles are coming out now addressing this issue.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/indias-homeless-shelters-struggle-meet-demand-200325190150342.html
Yes, you pay them the equivalent of a universal income and put the economy into stasis. Then reboot it later.
The important thing is that you maintain social distancing, otherwise you are accepting that pile of bodies in the corner.
The thing is the draconian measures you advocate are already in place: liberties suspended, movement restricted, economies ruined. The rule of law has been replaced by the rule of power and authority. You got what you wanted. Any argument about what might have happened had we done otherwise is counterfactual, and so is the “pile of bodies” you try to throw at my feet.
I have nothing to lose by criticizing the authoritarianism and the obsequious conformism we’ve flung over most of the world. If I’m wrong, that’s the end of it. If you’re wrong, on the other hand, history will never forget.
What is the argument here? I'm not saying there isn't one, I'd just like to see its premises laid out.
“The predictions of the models don't match the reality on the ground”.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4864096/dr-deborah-birx-modeling
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/26/deborah-birxs-important-reminder-about-coronavirus-worst-case-scenarios/
Dr. Ioannidis was right, “As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data.”
There will be a reckoning.
With such types (i.e., head in the sand, ignorance is bliss, fragile psyche, don't confuse me with the facts, snowflake, conspiracy denier, etc.), it's far more entertaining to wait for the branch they are sitting on to snap.
Francis Boyle Interview
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387
From the same article: Community spread in the United States could require a shift from containment to mitigation strategies such as social distancing in order to reduce transmission. Such strategies could include isolating ill persons (including voluntary isolation at home), school closures, and telecommuting where possible.9
He's not arguing against the steps being taken because in the end it's not about the mortality or death rate or the number of people getting infected but the number of people requiring hospital care. So your whole argument for the past two pages is a straw man.
Do you even read what you post since it doesn't support the point you're making. Or has your point now evolved to the point we shouldn't paint doom scenarios of millions of infected and over a million dead?
Absolutely. But of course the poorest will be hit hardest and fastest and are the most vulnerable to economic disruption. But this is not a reason to continue with the exploitative economy we had until now. UBI and nationalisation of essential assets here now because we can and it it is the least disruptive policy, and spread to other places asap. Vote unenlightened!
Sorry, I'm voting for Gordon Brown.
Former UK Prime Minister Calls For Global Government to Fight Coronavirus
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/boris-johnson-positive-coronavirus?origin=shp&ref=hpsplash
Stop right there.
That is Trump and the people that want to lick his ass. And some libertarian weirdos. That isn't the elite. Everybody else understands that the epidemic plays out in roughly about 6 months, even if it can come back then later.
He wants to give more powers to the body of experts that got it so very wrong for so very long.
The senile old fart doesn't get my vote.
Who profits?
Most of us have been played.
I don't know, who profits?
Wait - is it undertakers?
A deeply religious notion. God is responsible for all. Nice.
What is wrong with you? He's the president of the United States. "Isn't the elite"? Jesus fuck on a stick. Did your brains fall out as soon as you started typing the word 'Trump'? Why does his name turn everyone into an irrepressible moron?
If you don't know, I'm definitely not voting for you.
At least Gordon knows who profits.
We might be in for some informed decisions for a change.
Quoting Hanover
Yes, but maybe not the God you think.
Quoting StreetlightX
Some Gods are funkier than others.
Everyone has grown so religious as of late, now even showing compassion for one's opponents coupled with a respect that struggle is a necessary component for growth. I do like what I see here, and am encouraged in a cautious way by this coronavirus in bringing forth positive change.
We should have expected the former messiah to have been sexually modest, so I'm not sure if he would have accepted penetration from a stick (or an animate object either), but I did not know him so can't speak to his predilections, but, in any event, I am not one to judge, lest I be judged, or so he said.
I think it's the contrary.
I'm pretty sure he's MIA right now precisely because of the latter.
Hillary might have tried to pay CV off and appoint it to a board somewhere.
In a National Emergency, Presidential Competence Is Crucial
Fair question.
Of course, you would have suffered for years now of Hillary Derangement Syndrome (HDS) and the country would be as polarized and hateful as now. Hillary's action would have been likely more in the line of let's say other OECD countries like the UK or France etc. The weaknesses of the health care system would still be obvious.
Because it's very unlikely that Hillary would have gone all "Chinese" and truly taken drastic measures of shelter-in the and quarantine of the whole country before this time at least. Likely a Hillary administration would have followed the steps of how Obama tackled the ebola-pandemic only to understand that this is something bigger. Perhaps now a country-wide lockdown would be implemented. Likely national state of emergency would have been called weeks earlier (perhaps in the start of this month, not on the 13th) and all the precautions done during the Obama years would be used. That famous organization for pandemics that Trump dissolved would have been leading the fight. Likely the respirator and PPC shortage would be there, but the National Procurement Act would have been enacted already. There would be more testing and perhaps New York would have gotten few days if not a week more time to prepare for what is now unfolding. So I guess that means less dead New Yorkers.
The stimulus package would be more difficult to push through, because the Republicans would be outraged about the size of the package and would be terrified of the "socialization" of the US and would be reminding about the deficit. And of course you wouldn't notice anything different, because the Republicans and Trump on his TV show would be hollering on top of their lungs how badly Clinton is doing this and what a fiasco this all has been. Republicans would be really eager to make Hillary a one term President and just waiting for the elections.
So my answer: In the end fewer dead Americans due to the pandemic. Perhaps -10%.
And NOS4A2 and Streetlight X and Maw would be making similar arguments as they are doing now.
A red herring.
I was merely sourcing the quote.
And you’d be still spinning counterfactual fantasies about parallel universes where Hillary won the 2016 election.
It's as though people came to understand only yesterday the concept of getting sick. Weak people die from getting sick, fit people don't. It's natural selection (not anthropogenic selection). Heart disease and cancer, diseases of modernity, are more of a plague than contagious disease; why no propaganda for them, or doctors (iatrogenic illness) being the third leading cause of death? I'd rather die from a natural cause than undue stress related to mechanical lifestyle of technoindustrialism (the most prodigious killer of all time).
Don't forget, when this blows over, to deeply criticize the aspects of group behavior which made you contribute to a 66 page thread on Coronavirus, and not one on(Coronavirus) Mass Hysteria.
The primary generative order of the human system (aka - an outsized organization) is mania and hysteria, suggestion, conformity, hypnotic induction of popular mind...interminable belief in what doesn't exist, often spurred by appeal to authority (in our time, mainly science: CDC, WHO, NIH, etc.) or argumentum ad populum. It doesn't appear it will ever change.
Also, as usual, technological determinism has a central place in causing or augmenting disaster. Transportation tech. is a vector as much as the protein coating of the viral DNA itself. Insinuation of panic, and its family of irrationality percolating through the primal horde, can be blamed on telecom.
"You can get sick...You can get sick." Shout it from the rooftops.
Don't care much about the 2016 election, just as I don't care of the 2012 election. It's history.
Just answering Hanovers question.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/24/liberty-university-reopens-despite-coronavirus-closure-calls-jerry-falwell-jr?CMP=share_btn_fb&fbclid=IwAR2Tr7pQIYVN5qq79Uk8jdRdIB3EVBBCLAwYypw8MLoF9qDPHW_ex4Sbj-M
What was that about Jesus, again?
I was only taking the piss. I assumed you were doing the same.
Well, I just took a shit and named it after your President. If the covid gets him, I suggest you run that. It would have a fighting chance against Biden.
Please do so before posting again.
So now we know that Joe Biden is a sheep fucking cousin of yours. I didn't know if you knew that.
The cemeteries are well stocked with bodies that were strong, fit, and good looking just before they encountered the fatal bacteria or virus that put them in their grave. The 1918 influenza epidemic was most often fatal for young people, 20-40 years of age, most of them fit workers or soldiers. Infectious diseases were the leading cause of death, up to roughly 1945, when antibiotics started to roll back infection. As we waste our antibiotic resources in various ways (like feeding them to cattle to make them grow faster), we are working back to the time when infectious disease will be king,
Then I came across the story out of Spain of the corpses of elderly patients found abandoned in their care homes, left to die alone in their twilight days.
I cannot help but think and feel that we are doing something wrong here.
If you were close enough perhaps you transferred the virus to her, and her being elderly essentially killed her. Good going, a-hole.
I don't have a cold enough heart to abandon the elderly during this time. I suspect it's quite easy for you; you've probably been doing it your entire life.
Antibiotics are manufactured in sufficient quantity to meet demand. If they were not fed to cattle, less would be manufactured.
I was half kidding. The fact is that the dynamics of good-samaritanship have changed. If you want to help the elderly you need to protect them from yourself by wearing gloves, a facemask, etc. You could potentially kill with the best intentions, but poor foresight.
Oh how the 2020's are going to be so different from the 2010's and 2000's.
This global pandemic hitting us in 2020 means that 20's have really a different tone historically as what came before it. Such collective experience from start of the decade has to have at least some effect how later people will view the 2020's to the 2010's.
What regions is talking about? States? Lower level cities, communities and counties?
This sounds as great as Trump's proposal of a joint US-Russia taskforce to counter hacking.
Yes and yes. :heart:
So was I. I can take a dig, and perhaps it is even deserved.
Where I live the cases are rare-ish. So I don't think we should completely throw our humanity to the wind quite yet. Like you said, steps can be taken to mitigate the risk, and I think that's better than avoiding susceptible populations entirely.
Yes! And we have the choice as people and companies to create our new normal just like we did on 9/12/01. Our society is built upon our collective moral compass and a whole lot more. We should take the time to think about how we want/need our society to be structured.
Should we go with Nietsche's idea of a pyramid shaped society with the masses at the bottom and the power as you ascend? Or should we stratify that power across the steps on the ladder so more people can have upward movement as well as lateral movement.
The USA is activating the social welfare system that is one of our strengths and together we will emerge stronger for it.
A step in the right direction, in my opinion. I think a sort of juggling act between lockdown and tentatively opening the economy is the reasonable approach.
As is your habit, you contradict yourself. Humans have the capacity to feel AND think, and we have the gift of foresight, at least some of us, so it is most human to express our foresight and take precautions for the benefit of others.
Yes! Please!
How many people are you willing to support sacrificing?
Do you watch unpartisan media at all? There are hotspots developing in all the large cities across the US, in a week they will all be overwhelmed like New York is today. This juggling you mention is the hope for a few months down the line when the first big wave has passed.
It's already to late.
That is a good point, Tiff.
9/11 did change a lot in the thinking. And on the positive side, hopefully this pandemic will make the focus to be afterwards on the prevention of pandemics from erupting, not on having the ability to cope with pandemics (or us just given it as some act of God). If there is now this surveillance network to track down terrorists (which many do fear), hopefully there truly will be a similar surveillance network to track down zoonotic diseases and other infectious diseases before they become a nasty epidemic/pandemic. How much emphasis will there be in this effort will be determined, unfortunately, by the death toll of this pandemic and the economic cost it will create.
I like your positive attitude, Tiff. Never forget that moral collective compass and that lot more, or otherwise all those guns you have will make a truly toxic cocktail.
I agree. Now there are places that are hit by the pandemic and those that will be hit.
Quoting NOS4A2
Have to say that at least he is optimistic. Perhaps his followers like it when Trump goes against the stream. But otherwise it's more of a denial. This first pandemic will take the time as any other one, 4-6 months, and there's no changing that. People won't come out when the infections and the death toll still rises.
Here for example the Armed Forces has determined (without coming out publicly about it, naturally) that the pandemic will be with us for 6 months. So going back to normal (from the start of the pandemic here) is after the summer here.
That's the probable way things will go. If it doesn't behave like the Spanish flu.
It's reasonable enough in theory. You'd need to set up something like border controls between the areas though, which might well be tricky.
Of course anything of the sort can only work if you have the testing capacity to accurately assess the risk in the first place. Germany has recently set it's minimum goal for accurate assessment at 200.000 tests a day. Scale that up to the US, you are looking at over a million.
The “unpartisan media” is a contradiction in terms. What I do not listen to is the Chicken Little approach to all this. Already the CDC is telling us the models of, say, the Imperial College of London, were wildly inaccurate, and these are the same models both the US and the UK have used to justify the suspension of our liberties. I wish to see other approaches.
But I will suspect it will get worse before it gets better in the US. The populace is not the healthiest of communities and the underlying conditions are the biggest killer.
Stupid. Everywhere is high risk and anything labeled low risk automatically becomes higher risk when opened up.
Read what I write, Baden.
Quoting ssu
There's enough information to see what happens if you don't act early and decisively. Italy was clear enough.
Is it not possible that people can go about their regular lives while still taking proactive measures to limit the spread of the virus? Personally I require no government to tell me that and I fear for people who do.