Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Jeff Buchanan]

I wish I were wrong but Trump isn't going to give it anything like 6 more weeks. He will probably try to "reopen America" next week. Or he'll declare America open or do whatever he feels he needs to do to give him political cover for when the jobs numbers come out April 3. He's looking for scapegoats above all else. And he'll get them when no Governor listens to his proclamation that the crisis is past. They and not him will be to blame for the economy's downfall. He's made the comparison multiple times in the past couple days to regular flu and traffic accidents, saying life goes on every day despite those threats. He's started talking about how there will be thousands of suicides if we stay quarantined much longer.

I think your timing is pretty good on Trump's announcements on this and your observation on why he's going to do it,avoid the balme game and all of that.

Fuck him. I feel confident Desantis and probably Cuomo will say that too. Cuomo knows for sure that the Trump administration and Trump himself are accountable for a good deal of what's transpiring right now with both GF and CFR in the US. He's probably mostly responsible for him not getting the test kits, PPE and vents he needs too. Could have been better. It isn't. Time to take charge of what I can take charge of in my state. Trump has made himself a political liability in this crisis - that's becoming more and more clear every day as our his actions being viewed as self serving

[froot loops]

The constant 24 hour news cycle doesn't help. The progress fighting it will be slow, there isn't going to be some breakthrough today or tomorrow. The time horizon units are 3 week increments depending on where you live. It is hurry up and wait. The administration would be better off putting out short news conferences with the experts and that should be it. The urge to come up with some happy news or game changing treatment every day is too high. There is no institutional memory for something like this so the country as a whole got caught with it's pants down. But it is going to be a while and this bill they are passing is going to be one of many.

[Jeff Buchanan]

It's the denominator stupid ....... this is a pretty good article, one day old, that concludes, "But unless something similar (the author sites studies in Iceland where everyone got tested) is attempted in the United States, policy makers will continue to make decisions in the dark, with potentially devastating consequences."

True.

The article, OTH, is replete with facts garnered from world wide studies, historical and past) that support the COVID-19 CFR being reported is substantially higher than what it most likely is because, well, the denominator.

Knowing the total number of COVID + folks in the US, or knowing close to it is vitally important if, for example, a well informed back to work strategy is implemented. Test, test, test ...... we're really not doing that, as Froot pointed out in our interchange, nationally and it's clear to me the CDC guidelines for who gets a test could be relaxed to facilitate more testing. Maybe they'll get to that in a week as test kits are located and distributed here in the US.

I think, at some point, maybe by April 12th (3w) the denominator is knowable with a certain degree of accuracy such accuracy suitable to make sound back to work decisions.

https://reason.com/2020/03/23/two-re...m-unrealistic/

[lineygoblue]

Wow .. I was feeling pretty decent today until I came in here and started reading.

As for our county here in Michigan, we have not had even one confirmed case yet. Our local community hospital has not admitted anyone yet for the virus. They are on high alert, and have even cleared an entire wing of the hospital for new ICU patients if needed, but nobody is in that wing yet.

In spite of all the bad news, I'm trying to remain optimistic that we may see some positive movement in this thing in the next 3-4 weeks or so. Its not easy to be optimistic in these days.

My wife, son and I are hunkered down here in a semi-rural area, and hoping for the best.

[Whitley]

This is a very telling and interesting graph I thought. If this pattern holds we are in some serious OMFG trouble.

FT+graphic.jpg

[Dr. Strangelove]

After two days of declining numbers, Italy's death count jumped back up again to 743 in the past 24 hours. That's almost 2,800 dead in the past 4 days alone.

6,820 dead total

I don't pretend to know how many people die in a 'normal' flu season in Italy. Assuming mortality rates are roughly similar, the CDC says this flu season in the US has killed between 23,000 to 59,000. Italy has a population less than 1/5 the size of ours so could 4,600-11,800 be a fair range?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...-idUSKBN21B2T4

[iam416]

This is a very telling and interesting graph I thought. If this pattern holds we are in some serious OMFG trouble.

We're going to be over a million cases halfway through April. So, yeah.

[Ghengis Jon]

Dr Anthony Fauci interviewed by Science Magazine.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/i-m-going-keep-pushing-anthony-fauci-tries-make-white-house-listen-facts-pandemic

[Whitley]

After two days of declining numbers, Italy's death count jumped back up again to 743 in the past 24 hours. That's almost 2,800 dead in the past 4 days alone.

6,820 dead total

I don't pretend to know how many people die in a 'normal' flu season in Italy. Assuming mortality rates are roughly similar, the CDC says this flu season in the US has killed between 23,000 to 59,000. Italy has a population less than 1/5 the size of ours so could 4,600-11,800 be a fair range?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...-idUSKBN21B2T4

Italy also has a much older population. Their median age is 5th highest in the world (45.5 years USA is 61st at 38.1 years). That doesn't help things either.

[iam416]

The political problem for all of this is that there is no good choice. You're choosing between various catastrophic outcomes. There is no win. There is only absolute and total disaster. You could make the right decision -- if we could some magically determine that one particular course minimized the catastrophe -- and you'd still have a catastrophic outcome. No one wants to own this shit unless it's bi-partisan. And the safest play is to error on the side saving human lives -- something we sort of intuitively gravitate to.

In any event, I lost all hope a few days ago. Absent a fucking Kordell Stewart to Michael Westbook-esque scientific miracle of justice, we are as fucked as fucked can be. I fully anticipate losing at least one person I know and love to the disease and seeing many others (including me) really suffer economically. It's going to be horrific.

[froot loops]

This is my layman's do not know shit other than what I have read point of view. For any kind of strategy other than hunkering down, the tests will need to be ramped up and at minimum there has to be random sampling of the population to find out the penetration. That would start to illuminate on what can be done to get the public out again. But that type of program takes time to formulate and I think a lot of people you would need to formulate this are working the front lines now trying to apply a tourniquet on the current problem.

As a nation are at a disadvantage compared to the Asian countries, they have had this happen a little more and they had planned accordingly. We want to try and copy what SK did, but some of the stuff they did is the result of long term planning.

[iam416]

We want to try and copy what SK did, but some of the stuff they did is the result of long term planning.

Yeah, from what I understand, the Pacific rim countries saw the tip of this iceberg with SARS and were scared shitless and prepared accordingly. North American and the EU were pretty much spared. Not this time.

[AlabamAlum]

[Hannibal]

This is a very telling and interesting graph I thought. If this pattern holds we are in some serious OMFG trouble.

FT+graphic.jpg

[Ghengis Jon]

The X and Y axis are not properly incremented, flattening some of the data curve.