"Coronavirus and the US" or "We are all going to die!!!!"

[barbos]

Italy dead 1266, +250 in one day. Looks like they are losing.
And I suspect Spain is becoming new Italy too.

 

[barbos]

Assuming their data can be trusted, totalitarian China seems to be doing well. Italy not so much. at this rate they will surpass China in a week. But my suspicion that won't happen.

While we can't be sure that they are telling the complete truth there's no way they could cover up if it was anything like it was before--the crowds of sick people were obvious. Note all the video that leaked. They didn't magically manage to stop all leaks, thus there must not be scenes like before.

I don't doubt that things got much better, it just looks like it got perfect it seems. daily new cases - 8 or even 1.

 

[Copernicus]

Just heard a mathematician claim that Washington state is our Wuhan. We have about two weeks for the epidemic to reach the other corner, southern Florida. May your case be a mild one.

Could you give more details on your source, e.g. a link? Just because someone says something alarming, that does not make it credible.

First of all, we do not know the extent of the outbreak in the Seattle area or elsewhere, because we have not had the tests to gather meaningful statistics. Secondly, much of the hype is over the unusual number of deaths. As of March 13, we know of 37 deaths and only 568 confirmed cases, but 25 of the 37 deaths are associated with one nursing home, Life Care Center of Kirkland. The rapidly rising number of cases confuse the rising number of tests being done with the rising number of people actually becoming infected. It is inevitable that the numbers will go up as the means to discover them goes up. I'm not saying that the Seattle area is not having a major problem, just that whatever numbers that mathematician had, they probably weren't very meaningful.

We were discussing this:
[YOUTUBE]Kas0tIxDvrg[/YOUTUBE]

And (both on YouTube) MedCram and Peak Prosperity who seem to think more in the range of a month or two for all of US to be infected.
We can't contain it so only non-pharma intervention -- self-quarantine -- to flatten the curve.

That is good advice. My main objection was the irresponsible comparison between the state of Washington, which has been taking strong actions of this sort, with Wuhan, which let the disease run rampant until they could not conceal it anymore. The situation in Washington state is nothing like in Wuhan, and it is not the source of all the outbreaks happening everywhere else in the country. Our primary problem in dealing with this crisis is the failure at the federal level to prepare for it and to make tests available quickly. Instead of using the WHO-approved test that other nations are using, our CDC and FDA worked to produce their own testing kit, which failed to work after they started distributing it. They are still not using the WHO test kits. Instead, they are continuing to try to develop their own tests and rely on Big Pharma politically-connected corporations to come up with solutions.

 

[lpetrich]

Testing For Coronavirus In South Korea: Just Pull Up At A Drive-Through Center : Goats and Soda : NPR

If you roll up to a drive-through COVID-19 testing center in South Korea, you might notice that safety procedures extend all the way to your car's air conditioning. You will be advised to hit the recirculation button so that if you're sick, you can keep your pathogens to yourself, in your car, and avoid infecting the medical personnel doing the testing.

The test takes 10 minutes at most. Results are texted to you, usually the next day. And it's free — paid for by the government.

Drive-through centers have helped South Korea do some of the fastest, most-extensive testing of any country. And while nobody is claiming that South Korea has defeated the outbreak, experts credit the emphasis on testing with reducing case numbers and fatalities.

...
South Korea has about 8,000 infections. Italy and Iran overtook it this week as the countries with the most cases outside of China. South Korea's new cases have gradually declined since the end of last month. For the first time since Jan. 20, the number of patients released from treatment on Friday, March 13 — 510 — outnumbered the 110 new cases.

A nation of 51 million, South Korea has tested about 250,000 people since its outbreak began on Jan. 20, with a daily capacity of 15,000. It has conducted 3,600 tests per million people compared to five per million in the U.S.

Taiwan Keeps Coronavirus Contained Despite China's Proximity : Goats and Soda : NPR

Taiwan's health-care system ranks among the best in the world. And it learned lessons from the experience of SARS 17 years ago, when it was the third worst hit territory after China and Hong Kong.

"They had basically prepared for the next crisis because after SARS people were so just shocked by the impact both to the people and the economy," Wang said.

...
Beijing considers the self-ruled, democratic island a part of China and has vowed to unite it eventually with the mainland, by force if necessary.

On the global stage, the Chinese government has tried to squeeze Taiwan. The island only has a handful of diplomatic allies, and it's not a member of the United Nations or the World Health Organization.

That has real-life implications during a disease outbreak, according to Richard Bush, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

That stupid one-China policy. Why don't they give it up and accept that they are effectively two Chinas?

An additional challenge also emerged for Taiwan: disinformation.

As the virus spread in China in late January, a stream of rumors and fake news about Taiwan's response to the outbreak began to appear on social media sites, including Facebook and Twitter, according to researchers who track the issue.

One of the first claimed that the outbreak was out of control in southern Taiwan and that trucks were being used to haul bodies to crematoriums, according to Summer Chen, editor-in-chief of Taiwan FactCheck Center, a group that ferrets out and debunks dodgy reports.

Many such claims come from mainland China, though apparently from ordinary users there.

 

[ZiprHead]

A biologist's take on on the spread of COVID-19 (Too bad it's in a stupid twitter feed.)

Let’s conservatively assume that there are 2,000 current cases in the US today, March 6th. This is about 8x the number of confirmed (lab-diagnosed) cases. We know there is substantial under-Dx due to lack of test kits; I’ll address implications later of under-/over-estimate. 2/n

 

[barbos]

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/loc...irport-due-to-coronavirus-screenings/2237389/

What could possibly go wrong?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/loc...irport-due-to-coronavirus-screenings/2237389/

What could possibly go wrong?

That's small potatoes. In the UK they are going to quarantine vulnerable populations and ask military producers to switch production to produce more ventilators. We don't think that a person may die for lack of a ventilator. But when the system gets overloaded this is what happens.

Coronavirus: Isolation for over-70s 'within weeks'

Over-70s - and younger people with certain health conditions - will be told they must remain at home and have groceries and vital medication delivered.

The health secretary said people without symptoms would be able to visit older relatives and friends as long as they stayed two metres - or six feet - apart from them.

He said the NHS did not have enough ventilator machines to treat the numbers of people likely to become critically ill with the virus and said the government was urging a wartime-like response from manufacturers to produce them.

 

[George S]

Just heard a mathematician claim that Washington state is our Wuhan. We have about two weeks for the epidemic to reach the other corner, southern Florida. May your case be a mild one.

Could you give more details on your source, e.g. a link? Just because someone says something alarming, that does not make it credible.

First of all, we do not know the extent of the outbreak in the Seattle area or elsewhere, because we have not had the tests to gather meaningful statistics. Secondly, much of the hype is over the unusual number of deaths. As of March 13, we know of 37 deaths and only 568 confirmed cases, but 25 of the 37 deaths are associated with one nursing home, Life Care Center of Kirkland. The rapidly rising number of cases confuse the rising number of tests being done with the rising number of people actually becoming infected. It is inevitable that the numbers will go up as the means to discover them goes up. I'm not saying that the Seattle area is not having a major problem, just that whatever numbers that mathematician had, they probably weren't very meaningful.

We were discussing this:
[YOUTUBE]Kas0tIxDvrg[/YOUTUBE]

And (both on YouTube) MedCram and Peak Prosperity who seem to think more in the range of a month or two for all of US to be infected.
We can't contain it so only non-pharma intervention -- self-quarantine -- to flatten the curve.

Khan Academy's version. IMO scary as hell.
[YOUTUBE]mCa0JXEwDEk[/YOUTUBE]

 

[bilby]

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/loc...irport-due-to-coronavirus-screenings/2237389/

What could possibly go wrong?

That's small potatoes. In the UK they are going to quarantine vulnerable populations and ask military producers to switch production to produce more ventilators. We don't think that a person may die for lack of a ventilator. But when the system gets overloaded this is what happens.

Coronavirus: Isolation for over-70s 'within weeks'

Over-70s - and younger people with certain health conditions - will be told they must remain at home and have groceries and vital medication delivered.

The health secretary said people without symptoms would be able to visit older relatives and friends as long as they stayed two metres - or six feet - apart from them.

He said the NHS did not have enough ventilator machines to treat the numbers of people likely to become critically ill with the virus and said the government was urging a wartime-like response from manufacturers to produce them.

This 'switch production to ventilators' plan is an idea that could only have come from a politician who is living in the past, and has never had any exposure to the idea of actually doing anything productive in industry.

Not only is such equipment unlikely to become scarce (the existing manufacturers will probably have to ramp up their operation, but not by much); But it would likely be quicker, easier, and cheaper, to build new production lines for ventilators than to refit a factory that currently makes backhoes or bulldozers.

In WWII, lots of factories were refitted to make military equipment; But that was in a situation where the important thing is to make as many as possible (the more tanks, planes, guns and trucks your army has, the better); And there was a significant shortage of labour - every worker who wasn't in the armed forces needed to be doing something directly helpful to the war effort.

Neither is the case here. A sick person won't get better faster with two or three ventilators than he would with just one; And the UK has vast idle capacity in both workforce and industrial buildings that are currently out of use.

It would make far more sense (if more ventilator production really is needed) to refit an empty industrial unit, and to have existing ventilator manufacturers train unemployed people to operate the new production lines, rather than trying to retrofit an existing factory set up to make something totally different.

It would, however, make it more difficult for Boris to strike a Churchillian pose. Which is the only actual purpose of this insane plan.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Don't smoke!!!!!!

https://journals.lww.com/cmj/Abstra...of_factors_associated_with_disease.99363.aspx

It makes it 14x as dangerous.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Heh. The dispensaries in town are doing a bang-up business with everyone out of work for the week. They have signs at the door, asking customers not to come in if they have scratchy throat, shortness of breath, or a cough. Like, you know, every smoker out there...

 

[George S]

Don't smoke!!!!!!

https://journals.lww.com/cmj/Abstra...of_factors_associated_with_disease.99363.aspx

It makes it 14x as dangerous.

Your advice is fine for the young and all. However, as the paper says, "history of smoking" is the second highest factor. Age the first (says the 76-yr-old) with a history of smoking lo these many years ago.

 

[bilby]

Apparently people are now panic buying meat.

That's going to be hilarious when there's power cuts and all the hoarded meat goes bad.

I will be fine though; I have been panic buying electricity just in case. I have every light in the house switched on all day.

 

[Jokodo]

Apparently people are now panic buying meat.

That's going to be hilarious when there's power cuts and all the hoarded meat goes bad.

I will be fine though; I have been panic buying electricity just in case. I have every light in the house switched on all day.

Why would there be power cuts? I'm pretty sure electricity production will be upheld even when everyone else is told to stay at home.

 

[Shake]

This was a good video which was (I assume) mirrored by Holy Koolaid (an outstanding channel for atheists, btw):

[YOUTUBE]qf3Ih0kNvlU[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Keith&Co.]

Apparently people are now panic buying meat.

That's going to be hilarious when there's power cuts and all the hoarded meat goes bad.

I will be fine though; I have been panic buying electricity just in case. I have every light in the house switched on all day.

Why would there be power cuts? I'm pretty sure electricity production will be upheld even when everyone else is told to stay at home.

But if the maintenance crews are cut to skeletal levels, certain blocks may be cut out by a storm or whatever.

 

[barbos]

I look at the statistics for different countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
And don't really understand how some countries like India managed to avoid large number of infections/deaths?
Are they covering it up?
Russia too, have suspiciously low numbers.

 

[Jokodo]

Apparently people are now panic buying meat.

That's going to be hilarious when there's power cuts and all the hoarded meat goes bad.

I will be fine though; I have been panic buying electricity just in case. I have every light in the house switched on all day.

Why would there be power cuts? I'm pretty sure electricity production will be upheld even when everyone else is told to stay at home.

But if the maintenance crews are cut to skeletal levels, certain blocks may be cut out by a storm or whatever.

I don't know about where you live, but where I live the electricity supply is considered vital infrastructure and unlikely to be cut to skeletal levels as long as there are enough people around to staff it. If nothing else, they'll send in the military to help with maintenance (they already sent in a few hundred soldiers to help out in major supermarket chains' distribution centers to avoid shortages due to panic buying, I'm sure if shit hits the fan they can instead order supermarkets to use their own staff and refill only the most essential goods if they have insufficient manpower otherwise, and send the army to help maintaining the power infrastructure instead).

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I look at the statistics for different countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
And don't really understand how some countries like India managed to avoid large number of infections/deaths?
Are they covering it up?
Russia too, have suspiciously low numbers.

Maybe we need to drink more vodka.

 

[Tharmas]

I have a question. Has it been determined that Covid-19 is a "one-and-done," meaning that once you contract the virus and recover, you have immunity thereafter? Or is it more like the regular flu, which mutates all the time and you need an annual immunization? It would seem that the answer to that question would have a great impact on strategies for dealing with the pandemic in the immediate future.