i don't think they are telling the truth, but no way the majority of the nation has this thing....
So what is your guess?
500 million have it?

Beat40 said:

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k2aggie07 said:

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Quote:

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1) Self quarantine if your are sick, wash your hands, be careful, etc...
2) Lock everything down for a month... and hope it doesn't come back in a month (which it will..). While everything is shut down, have companies keep paying salaries, etc and be completely oblivious to whether their balance sheets can handle it.

I'm not seeing a lot of middle ground from most on this thread.

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People on this thread aren't in charge of anything other than themselves. And there's a huge amount of middle ground. Our country is doing middle ground right now. That's good. I wish it was more clearly communicated.

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This is an aspect I think needs to be improved on - communication to the American people. I wish a plan was communicated from the top down. If the plan needs to be amended, so bit it. But humans are mostly prone to follow a plan, so any sort of top down plan would go a long way to quelling some panic.

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I've had 17 deployments in my former career in emergency services, 100's of tabletop and functional excercises many with alphabet letters and many days and nights in an Emergency Operations Center, I can tell you there are plans and NONE of them go as planned or practiced.

What you do have is a baseline of practice, contacts, stakeholders in who does what etc., but I can tell you if you are on the front lines a written plan goes out the door.

Satire now, reality later?

AggieChemist said:

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People didn't believe ebola was real while it ravaged their own country. The level of cognitive dissonance and suspension of belief here is strangely familiar.

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This is not World War Z!

RAB91 said:

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Bo Darville said:

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RAB91 said:

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Bo Darville said:

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The Lost said:

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Bo Darville said:

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Alta said:

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No deaths are acceptable. But again we live in reality and not a fairy-tale land. People, especially the elderly, die of illnesses. How many deaths due to consequences of halting daily life due to the virus are acceptable? How do you balance those two concerns. It's easy to try to make decisions in a vacuum but we don't live in a vacuum.

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Human lives in the order of 10's of thousands are always more important to me than the economy. Maybe you think differently.

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So why do you drive daily? Should we shut down the auto industry because it kills?

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If we could shut down the auto industry for 1 to 2 weeks and save 100,000 lives I'd be okay with it.

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100,000 lives? Are you being over dramatic to make a point?

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There are 46 million elderly living in the US today. If a paltry 25% get infected you'll have 1% die you get about 100,000 people.

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China has an elderly population of three times that and they've only had ~3K deaths. Yes, we have more freedoms that keep certain control measures from being put in place, but I have a hard time seeing the numbers you're pushing.

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They avoided it with draconian measures like looking down entire cities of millions of people. We will avoid high numbers with cancellations and not being morons.

ccaggie05 said:

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tysker said:

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Bo Darville said:

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RAB91 said:

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Bo Darville said:

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The Lost said:

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Bo Darville said:

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Alta said:

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No deaths are acceptable. But again we live in reality and not a fairy-tale land. People, especially the elderly, die of illnesses. How many deaths due to consequences of halting daily life due to the virus are acceptable? How do you balance those two concerns. It's easy to try to make decisions in a vacuum but we don't live in a vacuum.

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Human lives in the order of 10's of thousands are always more important to me than the economy. Maybe you think differently.

---

So why do you drive daily? Should we shut down the auto industry because it kills?

---

If we could shut down the auto industry for 1 to 2 weeks and save 100,000 lives I'd be okay with it.

---

100,000 lives? Are you being over dramatic to make a point?

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There are 46 million elderly living in the US today. If a paltry 25% get infected you'll have 1% die you get about 100,000 people.

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Chancellor Merkel estimates that 60-70 Germans will become infected. Seems inevitable that lots of elderly are going to contract this and die anyways.

The bigger issue I have is does it make sense to cancel vacations, Houston Rodeo, SXSW, schools, churches and daily activities to slow the inevitable?

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Again, I'll keep harping on the same point. While some of these closings are likely panic induced, the point of these measures isn't to eliminate the virus or keep anybody from dying. The point is to keep our hospitals from getting overrun, which WILL lead to unnecessary deaths (both from covid-19 patients and patients with other medical problems who can't get good care because the hospital is overrun).

I feel like is something our government and media should be harping on every hour of every day until people understand.

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We get it. The desired effect is to keep a segment of society alive longer to eventually die of the same disease anyways. By delaying the inevitable we'll hopefully save lives of the other unhealthy people that also need medical care. The reason the government and media aren't relaying the message is that it sucks and sounds like a form of rationing.

China pretty much locked their entire country down. So, that's one thing we could do.

We could also ignore it like Italy did. Here's what they're dealing with now.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/who-gets-hospital-bed/607807/

Quote:

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Instead of providing intensive care to all patients who need it, its authors suggest, it is becoming necessary to follow "the most widely shared criteria regarding distributive justice and the appropriate allocation of limited health resources."

The principle they settle upon is utilitarian. "Informed by the principle of maximizing benefits for the largest number," they suggest that "the allocation criteria need to guarantee that those patients with the highest chance of therapeutic success will retain access to intensive care."

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The Fall Guy said:

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AggieChemist said:

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People didn't believe ebola was real while it ravaged their own country. The level of cognitive dissonance and suspension of belief here is strangely familiar.

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This is not World War Z!

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Some of the arguments here sound like the ones I heard in the bush.

cone said:

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jury is still out, but the consensus is that this is primarily droplet spread and contracted from surfaces or being near people shedding the virus actively

if its aerosol, that doesn't seem like the primary vector or the attack rate is lower

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I just now came across this, which was published March 9th, 2020:

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/03/study-highlights-ease-spread-covid-19-viruses

Quote:

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COVID-19 can be spread before it causes symptoms, when it produces symptoms like those of the common cold, and as many as 12 days after recovery, according to a virologic analysis of nine infected patients published today on the preprint server medRxiv.

Also, in a study published in today's Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers at Johns Hopkins found a median incubation period for COVID-19 of 5.1 dayssimilar to that of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

Virus concentrates quickly, sheds efficiently

Led by researchers in Germany, the virologic study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, found that the novel coronavirus quickly begins producing high viral loads, sheds efficiently, and grows well in the upper respiratory tract (nose, mouth, nasal cavity, and throat).

"Shedding of viral RNA from sputum outlasted the end of symptoms," the authors wrote. "These findings suggest adjustments of current case definitions and re-evaluation of the prospects of outbreak containment."

The nine patients, who were admitted to the same Munich hospital, were studied because they had had close contact with an index case. Cell cultures and real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) were done on throat swabs and samples of sputum, stool, blood, and urine. Throat swabs showed very high viral shedding during the first week of symptoms.

The findings contrasted starkly with those from the 2003 outbreak of SARS in terms of viral load. "In SARS, it took 7 to 10 days after onset until peak RNA concentrations (of up to 5x105 copies per swab) were reached," the researchers wrote. "In the present study, peak concentrations were reached before day 5, and were more than 1,000 times higher."

Throat swabs were much more sensitive with COVID-19 than with the SARS virus, and the virus was easier to isolate. Seven of the nine patients had upper respiratory infection.

Social distancing to prevent infection

Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, which publishes CIDRAP News, said that the results challenge the World Health Organization's assertion that COVID-19 can be contained.

The findings confirm that COVID-19 is spread simply through breathing, even without coughing, he said. They also challenge the idea that contact with contaminated surfaces is a primary means of spread, Osterholm said.

"Don't forget about hand washing, but at the same time we've got to get people to understand that if you don't want to get infected, you can't be in crowds," he said. "Social distancing is the most effective tool we have right now."

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tysker said:

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ccaggie05 said:

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tysker said:

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Bo Darville said:

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RAB91 said:

---

Bo Darville said:

---

The Lost said:

---

Bo Darville said:

---

Alta said:

---

No deaths are acceptable. But again we live in reality and not a fairy-tale land. People, especially the elderly, die of illnesses. How many deaths due to consequences of halting daily life due to the virus are acceptable? How do you balance those two concerns. It's easy to try to make decisions in a vacuum but we don't live in a vacuum.

---

Human lives in the order of 10's of thousands are always more important to me than the economy. Maybe you think differently.

---

So why do you drive daily? Should we shut down the auto industry because it kills?

---

If we could shut down the auto industry for 1 to 2 weeks and save 100,000 lives I'd be okay with it.

---

100,000 lives? Are you being over dramatic to make a point?

---

There are 46 million elderly living in the US today. If a paltry 25% get infected you'll have 1% die you get about 100,000 people.

---

Chancellor Merkel estimates that 60-70 Germans will become infected. Seems inevitable that lots of elderly are going to contract this and die anyways.

The bigger issue I have is does it make sense to cancel vacations, Houston Rodeo, SXSW, schools, churches and daily activities to slow the inevitable?

---

Again, I'll keep harping on the same point. While some of these closings are likely panic induced, the point of these measures isn't to eliminate the virus or keep anybody from dying. The point is to keep our hospitals from getting overrun, which WILL lead to unnecessary deaths (both from covid-19 patients and patients with other medical problems who can't get good care because the hospital is overrun).

I feel like is something our government and media should be harping on every hour of every day until people understand.

---

We get it. The desired effect is to keep a segment of society alive longer to eventually die of the same disease anyways. By delaying the inevitable we'll hopefully save lives of the other unhealthy people that also need medical care. The reason the government and media aren't relaying the message is that it sucks and sounds like a form of rationing.

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How the **** is that a form of rationing? Just saying screw it and refusing to treat patients over a certain age or with specific underlying health issues is rationing.

JP_Losman said:

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i don't think they are telling the truth, but no way the majority of the nation has this thing....
So what is your guess?
500 million have it?

---

For reference, 2009 Swine flu was estimated to have infected 10 to 20% of the World's population.
Even the Spanish Flu infected just 33% of the world's population.

ccaggie05 said:

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tysker said:

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ccaggie05 said:

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tysker said:

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Bo Darville said:

---

RAB91 said:

---

Bo Darville said:

---

The Lost said:

---

Bo Darville said:

---

Alta said:

---

No deaths are acceptable. But again we live in reality and not a fairy-tale land. People, especially the elderly, die of illnesses. How many deaths due to consequences of halting daily life due to the virus are acceptable? How do you balance those two concerns. It's easy to try to make decisions in a vacuum but we don't live in a vacuum.

---

Human lives in the order of 10's of thousands are always more important to me than the economy. Maybe you think differently.

---

So why do you drive daily? Should we shut down the auto industry because it kills?

---

If we could shut down the auto industry for 1 to 2 weeks and save 100,000 lives I'd be okay with it.

---

100,000 lives? Are you being over dramatic to make a point?

---

There are 46 million elderly living in the US today. If a paltry 25% get infected you'll have 1% die you get about 100,000 people.

---

Chancellor Merkel estimates that 60-70 Germans will become infected. Seems inevitable that lots of elderly are going to contract this and die anyways.

The bigger issue I have is does it make sense to cancel vacations, Houston Rodeo, SXSW, schools, churches and daily activities to slow the inevitable?

---

Again, I'll keep harping on the same point. While some of these closings are likely panic induced, the point of these measures isn't to eliminate the virus or keep anybody from dying. The point is to keep our hospitals from getting overrun, which WILL lead to unnecessary deaths (both from covid-19 patients and patients with other medical problems who can't get good care because the hospital is overrun).

I feel like is something our government and media should be harping on every hour of every day until people understand.

---

We get it. The desired effect is to keep a segment of society alive longer to eventually die of the same disease anyways. By delaying the inevitable we'll hopefully save lives of the other unhealthy people that also need medical care. The reason the government and media aren't relaying the message is that it sucks and sounds like a form of rationing.

---

How the **** is that a form of rationing? Just saying screw it and refusing to treat patients over a certain age or with specific underlying health issues is rationing.

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Hospitals deal with it everyday. It's called triage.

SIAP.

Interesting. I admit it actually seems like a pretty smart idea. If people are out and about anyway, it's better to do this than have them come inside a clinic and be more exposed.

AggieChemist said:

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People didn't believe ebola was real while it ravaged their own country. The level of cognitive dissonance and suspension of belief here is strangely familiar.

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There is a massive difference in the two.

The areas where Ebola appears is third world. Many people would rather go to the local witch doctor than to a real doctor. People live in small structures with little if any hygiene and often live off "bush meat" which is almost always how Ebola get into the human population.

It is very hard to explain to someone from that world that there is a particle invisible to the naked eye that can have a lethality rate of 90%.

Most people realize this thing is out there, it can be very dangerous, but are not going to run for the bunker because they believe the world will look like The Walking Dead in the next 3 months. Panicking is far more dangerous than the virus could ever be. How many people are already hurting their health through endless worry, stress, high blood pressure, etc?

Quote:

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We get it. The desired effect is to keep a segment of society alive longer to eventually die of the same disease anyways. By delaying the inevitable we'll hopefully save lives of the other unhealthy people that also need medical care. The reason the government and media aren't relaying the message is that it sucks and sounds like a form of rationing.

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No. The desired effect is to reduce the spread, to reduce the peak. This saves more lives in the long run by affording better care to those who are inevitably going to get it and who are at higher risk.

It also prevents the rationing that will a matter of fact if the number of cases exceeds capacity.

wessimo said:

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Satire now, reality later?

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Democrats should definitely stay home on election day.

tsuag10 said:

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SIAP.

Interesting. I admit it actually seems like a pretty smart idea. If people are out and about anyway, it's better to do this than have them come inside a clinic and be more exposed.

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Following South Korea's example.

I live in Guatemala.

The school I work at is preparing for virtual learning. The government has called for any large gatherings (concerts, sporting events,etc.) to be cancelled. The virus is not here yet, but everyone is extremely worried about what will happen if/when it arrives. We just aren't prepared to deal with something like this down here.

planoaggie123 said:

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Whole US self-quarantines for 3 weeks.

The rest of the world only hit and miss.

What are the next steps? What stops it from re-entering? Then do we do another 3 week quarantine?

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They are just trying to flatten the curve of the crush of cases. We don't want that initial wave to hit the hospitals all at once.

The # of cases will end up being the same, they are just trying to spread them out some.

My conference in Italy was officially postponed, but about 15 people did make the trip knowing that quarantines, travel issues, etc might be increased. Sicily has had a very low number of cases and it didn't have the restrictions other areas in Italy did. I mentioned before that several of my friends were given advice suddenly to get out of the area as fast as they could when the lock down for the entire country was announced.
My friend that was trying to get to Malta didn't make it because they closed to all areas of Italy. One friend made it to Budapest, which was the last flight out. My UK friend feels Sicily is safer for her right now, rather than trying to get on a busy flight. Those stuck there are trying to make the best of it. At one restaurant, they were asked to move to a distance of 1 meter apart. ABC news actually did highlight one of the group in this video:
https://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/escaping-italy-ahead-countrywide-coronavirus-shutdown-part-69526183

cone said:

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this is the fed's response

which is basically **** you we don't want to mass test

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Gotta keep the numbers low.

Quote:

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"I would rather because I like the numbers being where they are," Trump continued. "I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault. "

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Rapier108 said:

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AggieChemist said:

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People didn't believe ebola was real while it ravaged their own country. The level of cognitive dissonance and suspension of belief here is strangely familiar.

---

There is a massive difference in the two.

The areas where Ebola appears is third world. Many people would rather go to the local witch doctor than to a real doctor. People live in small structures with little if any hygiene and often live off "bush meat" which is almost always how Ebola get into the human population.

It is very hard to explain to someone from that world that there is a particle invisible to the naked eye that can have a lethality rate of 90%.

Most people realize this thing is out there, it can be very dangerous, but are not going to run for the bunker because they believe the world will look like The Walking Dead in the next 3 months. Panicking is far more dangerous than the virus could ever be. How many people are already hurting their health through endless worry, stress, high blood pressure, etc?

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Thank you for mansplaining to me the difference between the two viruses, the populations, and clarifying for me what I meant by my statement.

k2aggie07 said:

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Quote:

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We get it. The desired effect is to keep a segment of society alive longer to eventually die of the same disease anyways. By delaying the inevitable we'll hopefully save lives of the other unhealthy people that also need medical care. The reason the government and media aren't relaying the message is that it sucks and sounds like a form of rationing.

---

No. The desired effect is to reduce the spread, to reduce the peak. This saves more lives in the long run by affording better care to those who are inevitably going to get it and who are at higher risk.

It also prevents the rationing that will a matter of fact if the number of cases exceeds capacity.

---

Reducing the spread and the peak is fine but if we have a long-flat peak (upside down U) versus a short high-peak (upside down V), is that really worth it in the long run? Especially if estimates are that 60-70% of the population is going to get it anyways? Should we suffer now greatly now and get is over with or suffer less but more slowly over time? Again I'm glad I don't have to make these decisions.

And by rationing I would also consider it to include time, money and general happiness. From the outside, the young and healthy appear to be taking the brunt of the effort, lifestyle change and monetary loss.

AgsMyDude said:

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cone said:

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this is the fed's response

which is basically **** you we don't want to mass test

---

Gotta keep the numbers low.

Quote:

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"I would rather because I like the numbers being where they are," Trump continued. "I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault. "

---

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Talking about a cruise ship (likely the one in Japan based on how the statement is phrased) is completely separate from anything about cases here.

Link to article

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-testing-covid-19-tests-per-capita-chart-us-behind-2020-3

Look at this map. How prudent is it to go on with this event?

tysker said:

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k2aggie07 said:

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Quote:

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We get it. The desired effect is to keep a segment of society alive longer to eventually die of the same disease anyways. By delaying the inevitable we'll hopefully save lives of the other unhealthy people that also need medical care. The reason the government and media aren't relaying the message is that it sucks and sounds like a form of rationing.

---

No. The desired effect is to reduce the spread, to reduce the peak. This saves more lives in the long run by affording better care to those who are inevitably going to get it and who are at higher risk.

It also prevents the rationing that will a matter of fact if the number of cases exceeds capacity.

---

Reducing the spread and the peak is fine but if we have a long-flat peak (upside down U) versus a short high-peak (upside down V), is that really worth it in the long run? Especially if estimates are that 60-70% of the population is going to get it anyways? Should we suffer now greatly now and get is over with or suffer less but more slowly over time? Again I'm glad I don't have to make these decisions.

And by rationing I would also consider it to include time, money and general happiness. From the outside, the young and healthy appear to be taking the brunt of the effort, lifestyle change and monetary loss.

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Yes, because shortening the peak / elongating it gives our health care system the best possible chance to try and deal with it and not impode.

I don't believe most of it from China, I look at South Korea.