Are you scared? : (

[Sassy Kenin]

Let me just put this little video here incase anyone has 30 minutes to burn 😇

 

[Drayke Newall]

1 hour ago, FairreLilette said:

Unfortunately, the hospitals in America are in a PPE shortage.  Plus, surgical masks are not appropriate PPE and that's what many nurses and doctors have been forced to used because of a shortage, sub-standard and/or even "dirty" masks.  It's on the internet but what is truth and what is not truth in every hospital who is to know?   

As far as a lock-down...it depends what country you come from.  America and other countries only have partial lock-down.  People can go to the store, the bank, the laundromat plus a few other essentials; otherwise, it's lock down and stay in your home.  How safe are those groceries stores?  How safe am I if I go to the store and touch a bread for example.  How many other people have touched that one bread?  And, so on and so forth with just about every item in the world.  

And, how do you know all the medical personnel have 100% not been infected?  Have they all been tested?  Do they go to the grocery store before me after they've treated a coronavirus patient?  

And, my building seems free of coronavirus at about 9 days or so of isolation with no one having any symptoms.  Why would we want an infected person to lock-down here with non-infected people?  That's the last thing we'd want.  

At nine days of isolation, since it takes about five days for incubation, if people in my building had coronavirus, it would have already shown, wouldn't it?  No one here is symptomatic of anything other than their already existing diseases such as diabetes, etc.  

True, however no society can not stop people from going to the supermarket as food, medicine etc are a necessity. Even China's lockdown allowed movement to the store and back.

It comes down to a few things. Once a lockdown is in place, if you come down with symptoms within 5 days after the lockdown (the min. known time symptoms begin to show) or have come in contact with a person who has come down with symptoms within those 5 days, then you need to report that to authorities or a new fancy website (China had a finger print scanner) that records all people infected (most people would have 5 days of food by now).

During those 5 days of no movement other than emergency services, disinfect the city. Once those 5 days (+1 so as people can check if they have been near someone and are asymptomatic) have passed those that have recorded having symptoms or being near someone with them must stay indoors and have their food etc delivered at a certain time of day when others (non-infected) aren't moving about. Those critical are taken to hospital (with an alert given to the suburb stating to stay indoors whilst they are moved) and those infected daily report on that new website if they have increasing symptoms etc so as medical treatment can be prepared for them if necessary.

Wait 3 weeks with this process (or max time known for virus to stop spreading +1 week) and hey presto virus contained (in a perfect world). The problem is that in order to do this citizens MUST comply with staying indoors for the first 5 days and also MUST report. As we have seen however that isn't going to happen (and not enough people to enforce it), just like the tracking website isn't going to happen due to too many people probably screaming privacy issues.

There is a reason the lockdown worked so well in China and this is because they had the technology in place already due to their privacy/freedom restrictions to allow the government and professionals track the virus, infected and enforce the lockdown. It is a catch 22 for our modern society. We are all for freedom and hence the lockdown cant work and yet in this situation it is the removal of those freedoms we hold so dear that China had created years ago that has proved beneficial.

As far as partial lockdowns are concerned, they shouldn't have happened. It should have been full lockdown, but governments are more worried about the economy than properly containing the virus.

Edited March 24, 2020 by Drayke Newall

[Drayke Newall]

2 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick has a solution...
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/public-health/2020/03/24/texas-lt-gov-dan-patrick-spurns-shelter-in-place-urges-return-to-work-says-grandparents-should-sacrifice/

Wisconsin's Ron Johnson and Donald Trump are thinking along the same lines. Their tradeoff is curious though, grandparents for grandkid's futures, as if there's no alternative. We don't yet know how it'll all shake out in China, but they might have preserved both. Does Patrick think we're not great enough to do that?

So glad I don't live in the USA if this is what their leaders believe that to ensure economic security you must sacrifice human lives.

Lets see:

Economy downfall and therefore must improve to ensure the economy and capitalism survives... Check
Place to take elderly and those that are disabled or high risk to die... Check
Leaders evil enough to do this... Check

Now all you need to do is get a red flag, paint a white dot in the middle and a broken cross and you can go back to 1940 Germany and live the good life again where invalids, the sick and mentally ill were all treated the same way by that evil leader and sacrificed to take the strain off the economy they created. 🙄

 

Edited March 24, 2020 by Drayke Newall

[ItHadToComeToThis]

1 hour ago, Charcoal Kidd said:

So this is about way more than the old and week, majority of hospitalizations in many areas are young healthy men 20 to 49 I think.

No, no they are not. The majaority of hospitalised cases are either elderly or those with health conditions. As for your husband, he likely has an underlying health condition that he doesn’t know about or he is in the 1% that are just unlucky. If you go by the WHO website and worldometer. 95% of people will have mild symptoms, 5% wont. 4% of that 5% comprises people who have underlying health conditions with 1% unsurety. I’m done with people throwing around erroneous figures and claims. Even the girl who died recently had an underlying health condition.

Out of the hundreds of thousands of cases we have had around 16,000 deaths. The highest of which are in places like Italy which is due to Italy having the oldest population in the world. There is currently a 85% recovery rate with 102,430 people having recovered from the virus. The media won’t tell you this as all they seem to want to do right now is report the worst and have you cowering under your table cloth.

Current cases are at 382,000. Sounds a lot but consider this. 81,171 of that number are in China and 63,927 are in Italy. If we take the number in the USA which is currently 46,145 and go by the above statistics then 39,223.25 of those people should recover and 43,837.75 will have mild symptoms.

I am not saying that you shouldn’t take it seriously. Social distancing, hand washing, isolation etc. All of this will help in protecting those in society who are the most vulnerable and the most at risk from this virus. We should all do our part to ensure the virus doesn’t spread.

The best advice is this. Follow the basics, distance yourself and isolate. Outside of that, don’t loose your head or let yourself get drawn into a state of constant panic and paranoia. And stop paying too much attention to the media. The media is neglecting some of these facts and figures as let’s be honest...it doesn’t sell. Every time I turn on the news or some other form of media it’s horror panic inducing music with some guy talking in a really stern terror inducing voice telling you that the apocalypse is coming and the world is about to end or some government official doing exactly the same.

Deep breaths.

 

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus#tab=tab_1

 

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, ItHadToComeToThis said:

The majaority of hospitalised cases are either elderly or those with health conditions.

The effect is robust, but it seems to vary by geography. In the US, there's an unusually large share of hospitalized cases under age 45. It's not a majority, for sure, but it's apparently enough to puzzle epidemiologists. Maybe younger people are simply more active despite isolation orders, and thus transmit it more within their age cohort, but nobody knows, and nobody knows why this is more common in the US than elsewhere. (Also, young people can die from this disease, even without any known pre-existing conditions. It's much less likely, though, the younger the person.)

The whole age-specificity effect remains a puzzle. There's a theory that older patients are more likely to have encountered some specific immune-system stressor -- an earlier unrelated virus, perhaps, or some environmental challenge -- that predisposes them to the lethal response to this virus. (If so, maybe that stressor is more likely to have been encountered earlier in life in the US, or something. All pure speculation.)

Another demographic challenge: Deaths within an age group are almost two-to-one male. Even the quite rare deaths under age 20: majority male. The exception is the very, very old, where it's still much more likely for a male to die, but there are so many fewer males living to that age.

So statistically the most vulnerable by far are older males. Now where else do we see that demographic?

[roseelvira]

 Blood Type perhaps ???   Something they  may  want to check ,,,,,   is   it possible  that  the missing    answer    is  blood type.......  as well as underlying conditions  that is making this virius so horrible    just wondering ,,,,,,  

Edited March 24, 2020 by roseelvira

[Madelaine McMasters]

6 hours ago, Drayke Newall said:

So glad I don't live in the USA if this is what their leaders believe that to ensure economic security you must sacrifice human lives.

Lets see:

Economy downfall and therefore must improve to ensure the economy and capitalism survives... Check
Place to take elderly and those that are disabled or high risk to die... Check
Leaders evil enough to do this... Check

Now all you need to do is get a red flag, paint a white dot in the middle and a broken cross and you can go back to 1940 Germany and live the good life again where invalids, the sick and mentally ill were all treated the same way by that evil leader and sacrificed to take the strain off the economy they created. 🙄

 

It does sorta feel that way. They're banking on Levitt's "we'll be okay" prediction coming true. There really is a balance between stopping the virus and stopping the economic destruction that results from fighting it. The either-or way they're framing this feels like an admission that we're not up to the task, making MAGA ring hollow.

[Qie Niangao]

11 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

It does sorta feel that way. They're banking on Levitt's "we'll be okay" prediction coming true. There really is a balance between stopping the virus and stopping the economic destruction that results from fighting it. The either-or way they're framing this feels like an admission that we're not up to the task, making MAGA ring hollow.

Of course there really isn't a tradeoff there, not with this virus. The economic impact is unavoidable; sending people back to work will at best spread the impact over many more months, until there's a vaccine for the entire populace.

I think the problem is that the US is a large and very diverse geography. Some rural areas truly won't see deaths from the virus for a month or two, meanwhile they think it's only a problem for The Coastal Elites, and why should their rural economies need to suffer, too? Of course, by not participating in a nation-wide isolation campaign, they ensure that waves of contagion will reverberate across the country for many months, spreading death to small communities over and over.

Penny wise and pound foolish, a false economy.

But it's red-hatted, red-state voters, plus the market ghouls (Laffer, Forbes, et al.) who think it's acceptable collateral damage. They still don't understand this isn't the flu, and COVID-19 deaths will be two or three orders of magnitude greater -- worse if US statistics aren't completely askew from lack of testing data.

I have a horrible feeling, though, that even those ghouls won't be promoting that position after this week's data are known.

After a few Senators are intubated.

[Madelaine McMasters]

2 hours ago, roseelvira said:

 Blood Type perhaps ???   Something they  may  want to check ,,,,,   is   it possible  that  the missing    answer    is  blood type.......  as well as underlying conditions  that is making this virius so horrible    just wondering ,,,,,,  

We've known for a long time that infection rates and immune responses to various pathogens often have a correlation to blood type. I don't think the correlations are terribly strong, and I don't think we've identified the actual mechanisms, which likely vary depending on the pathogen. There are theories that the antigens responsible for creating the four different blood types are directly responsible for differences in vulnerability and there are theories that the connection is indirect, in the form of other genetic differences in blood cells that accompany the antigen differences.

From what I've read, blood type does make a difference in COVID-19 infection rates (A is highest, O is lowest), but it's not a huge one.

The ABO typing system, as well as RH+/-, is no longer sufficient to label all the important differences in blood characteristics. There's also a P system of antigens that have been associated with susceptibility to HIV.

There are lots of missing answers in the world of infection disease . COVID-19 just added some more.

[LittleMe Jewell]

9 hours ago, FairreLilette said:

And, my building seems free of coronavirus at about 9 days or so of isolation with no one having any symptoms.  Why would we want an infected person to lock-down here with non-infected people?  That's the last thing we'd want.  

 

7 hours ago, Drayke Newall said:

Once a lockdown is in place, if you come down with symptoms within 5 days after the lockdown (the min. known time symptoms begin to show) or have come in contact with a person who has come down with symptoms within those 5 days, then you need to report that to authorities or a new fancy website (China had a finger print scanner) that records all people infected (most people would have 5 days of food by now).

 

Just FYI:  COVID-19 symptoms can take anywhere from 2 to 14 days to show up.  So 2 days is the earliest one would expect to experience any symptoms, but it could be as long as 14 days after being in contact with the virus.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/symptoms-testing/symptoms.html

Edited March 24, 2020 by LittleMe Jewell

[Madelaine McMasters]

2 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Of course there really isn't a tradeoff there, not with this virus.

It's trite, but there are tradeoffs in almost everything. The problem is we often don't know what they are, even in retrospect. The entire "hammer and dance" idea is a tradeoff, because "hammer until it's gone" would probably kill more people.

There's another aspect of these tradeoffs that makes them so very difficult. It's often easier to assess the impact of what you do to address a problem you're focused on than the potentially much more diffuse effects of the things you didn't do as a result. For complex problems, we sometimes solve those portions that are most easy to "show and tell" about. This was true of the New Deal, which put a lot of resources into big infrastructure projects that were easy to put in the news, while neglecting vast swaths of rural America. We'll never know what America would look like if we'd allocated our resources differently.

[Alwin Alcott]

7 hours ago, ItHadToComeToThis said:

 I’m done with people throwing around erroneous figures and claims.

Current cases are at 382,000.

 

..  the current cases come out of a thick thumb. Some countries ONLY test people when they get hospitalized, or worse, when they need special IC care.

[FairreLilette]

8 hours ago, Drayke Newall said:

As far as partial lockdowns are concerned, they shouldn't have happened. It should have been full lockdown, but governments are more worried about the economy than properly containing the virus.

There is no food in place service that could provide meals if people all stayed where they are. 

If there was a food in place service that could provide food to those who "shelter in place"...there are still those people going out and being reckless and not even sheltering in place.

We'd have to turn in to Nazi-like governments of some kind and I don't know about that.  That would probably cause rioting, looting, chaos, human meltdown.

We wish we could control all people but we can't.  

I was married to a hospital worker for nearly 20 years.  At times, in bad "flu seasons" as they may have been called, he had to wear some kind of PPE gear as a precaution but he always ended up bringing that flu home.  

As far as further shelters for those who may need to be sequestered for a while, they could use the hotels along with the hospitals.  

Also, being married to a hospital worker for nearly 20 years, we'd think we were over the flu/cold or whatever it was as mostly "the flu/cold" is a self diagnosed thing in today's modern world but as soon as we would go back to kissing each other one or the other would come down with the "the flu or cold" again and it would last for months.  We'd both end up sick for months...giving it back and forth to each other. Take my advice and use extra precaution about kissing.  But, even PPE cannot prevent the flu/cold let alone a virus that needs a special respirator mask and a mask one needs training how to use.  My ex was sick every year and he wore masks and other items.  If I told him NO, no kissing period.  He would listen for awhile.  It's difficult living together in a love relationship but do take extra precaution.   

I live in Los Angeles County...it has a huge population here and there have been 8 deaths in L.A. County as of current numbers.  The flu can have complications of pneumonia.  There are people who have died from the flu as well.  Is the world over-reacting?  

Edited March 24, 2020 by FairreLilette

[LittleMe Jewell]

While I don't know about other countries, in most of the US, people are only being tested if they are super ill or if they are emergency providers or high government folks that have been in contact with confirmed cases or are themselves showing symptoms.  The run of the mill average citizen in most places here will not be able to get tested because we do have a shortage of test kits.

Additionally, for the reasons mentioned by Drayke before, I don't have any faith in the actual numbers coming out of China.  And as far as I know, North Korea has not even released any numbers yet.

So, yeah, the true total count of those that have had or do have COVID-19 is higher than the worldwide total we see reported.

[Cindy Evanier]

7 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

While I don't know about other countries, in most of the US, people are only being tested if they are super ill or if they are emergency providers or high government folks that have been in contact with confirmed cases or are themselves showing symptoms.  The run of the mill average citizen in most places here will not be able to get tested because we do have a shortage of test kits.

Additionally, for the reasons mentioned by Drayke before, I don't have any faith in the actual numbers coming out of China.  And as far as I know, North Korea has not even released any numbers yet.

So, yeah, the true total count of those that have had or do have COVID-19 is higher than the worldwide total we see reported.

Same in the UK, only the worst cases are being tested and the rest told to stay home and isolate unless the symptoms worsen.  I am completely ignoring the figures as I am also ignoring them saying only elderly and those with underlying conditions are dying.  

[Drayke Newall]

36 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

It does sorta feel that way. They're banking on Levitt's "we'll be okay" prediction coming true. There really is a balance between stopping the virus and stopping the economic destruction that results from fighting it. The either-or way they're framing this feels like an admission that we're not up to the task, making MAGA ring hollow.

The other issue is that these politicians are just using the Covid-19 virus as a scapegoat for the terrible economic management in the USA and the world. The economy was already on the brink of crashing last year. For months the stock market guru's have been wondering when the 'black swan' will swoop and crash the markets. Any look at the enormous unsustainable growth (bull run) seen from 2008- late 2019 is evidence of this, whereby the band-aid of the GFC in 2008 of lowering interest rates and keeping them low produced an enormous economic bubble and consequently gave absolutely no room to lower them further to impede another major crash.

Covid-19 virus was the straw that broke the camels back, and whilst yes the virus is to blame for the economy going down, it was only a matter of time that something else would pop the bubble if not this one. Even though capitalism has many benefits, avoiding market crashes and creating an ever growing divide between rich and poor are not counted as one.

What would be interesting to think on is, if it wasn't a pandemic virus that crashed the markets, would the world governments give the same financial support for the average Joe to the extent they have for this pandemic related crash? I would dare say it would be a 100% No.

The only way to stop this thing as evidenced by china, S. Korea and now by the looks (hopefully) Italy with their decreasing numbers over the last 2 days is to literally lockdown by force and ride it out. Trump or any other government thinking that going about normal business in a few days whilst it is still rampant is just irresponsible. Is there a chance of the whole virus is being blown out of proportion? Yes, however the risk of thinking this vs the possibility of it being a nightmare scenario is one no government should be playing Russian roulette with or it would end up like I said being compared to Nazi Germany.

What Trump and these other senators in the USA also need to realise is that whatever happens to the USA effects EVERY other countries economies due to them all being tied to the US Dollar. If the USA doesn't get the virus under control before they open for business again it will just be an up and down scenario. Look at China. They thought the same thing to protect their economy but as soon as they fired up industry more people got infected again and they had to close it down again. It took them 3-4 times to get manufacturing back to normal after many stops due to not containing the virus properly the first time.

3 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

There is no food in place service that could provide meals if people all stayed where they are. 

Yes you do have such a service. It's called Meals on Wheels. It just takes the CEO over there to expand the services accordingly and partner with delivery persons/companies to expand for this short period. The question comes will the capitalist nature of American CEO's bend to meet the need? Unless Meals on Wheels is entirely different to what it is over here in Australia.

Over in Australia we have meals on wheels that provide this very service as well to the sick and elderly and they have advised they would be willing (and in some cases already have) to expand this to any COVID-19 infected people. On top of that Woolworths, which is a grocery chain, over here has partnered with them in both providing additional supplies and delivery methods as needed.

Quote

We'd have to turn in to Nazi-like governments of some kind and I don't know about that.  That would probably cause rioting, looting, chaos, human meltdown.

Only in America will this happen as you guys seem to be hellbent on protecting your constitutional and bill of rights despite the sometimes necessary need to compromise for a short period of time for the benefit of everyone. Did you see riots, looting, chaos and human meltdown in Italy, who have been locked down in their homes by force of enormous fines or jail time for over 2 weeks? Where their civil liberties have been removed whereby they need to fill in a form as to why they are leaving their house prior to doing so to get approval to do so? Do you see the same riots etc. in other EU countries that have implemented the same lockdown procedures as Italy, or even New Zealand? No you don't.

American politics seem to be the ones that are downright not taking this seriously enough which is sad given how much their politics and economy influence the rest of the world.

18 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

While I don't know about other countries, in most of the US, people are only being tested if they are super ill or if they are emergency providers or high government folks that have been in contact with confirmed cases or are themselves showing symptoms.  The run of the mill average citizen in most places here will not be able to get tested because we do have a shortage of test kits.

Yet, for some odd reason no other country seems to have an issue with kit shortages up till just recently due to what seems to be export restrictions now placed on them. Very odd considering many are made in the USA. America have one of, if not the lowest test per capita.

18 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

And as far as I know, North Korea has not even released any numbers yet.

Them not having infected was recently shown in a scientific paper as basically impossible. Indonesia, for the entire month of February stated they had no cases despite every country around them having it, which was also stated as a mathematical and scientific impossibility. Even most governments are now saying that in all likelihood millions are infected but considering asymptomatic and mild cases go un-noticed/diagnosed they are not added to the official tally.

To put it into perspective, they are all now funding research to try and find out how it is spreading as they are completely baffled by it based on the official numbers not lining up with zones it is revealing to have spread to.

As to china's death count, I don't believe that for a second either, considering all the leaks from workers that happened stating crematoriums running 24/7 etc.

[Lyssa Greymoon]

41 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

And as far as I know, North Korea has not even released any numbers yet.

I think they have and the number was, unsurprisingly, zero.

[FairreLilette]

18 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

Yes you do have such a service. It's called Meals on Wheels. It just takes the CEO over there to expand the services accordingly and partner with delivery persons/companies to expand for this short period. The question comes will the capitalist nature of American CEO's bend to meet the need? Unless Meals on Wheels is entirely different to what it is over here in Australia.

Over in Australia we have meals on wheels that provide this very service as well to the sick and elderly and they have advised they would be willing (and in some cases already have) to expand this to any COVID-19 infected people. On top of that Woolworths, which is a grocery chain, over here has partnered with them in both providing additional supplies and delivery methods as needed.

Quote

 

Yes, we have meals on wheels for the elderly and sick.  However, you said 'everyone' needs to not move around.  But above you state meals on wheels is willing to help those 'with' COVID-19.

I said there is no food service that could supply food to 'everyone', not that I know of; however, I already thought of meals on wheels myself and it's something to be considered for those who do want to stay inside but we'd need deliveries of grooming products/soaps, etc...pet food...all kinds of things.  And, do they even have tests ready to test the meals on wheels drivers and PPE?  

I think we need to try ordering from our local stores and then having delivery in a clean ordered way as possible.  

Frankly, some of us may need government checks first before ordering food online because I looked at food prices online and they are higher than what I usually spend as I am single and don't need large amounts, let alone no where to store it in an apartment.  I buy smaller portions of a lot of things.  The online groceries seem to be average 4 per family size and larger and that's a lot of money buying in larger sizes.  Being a single, I'd be better with meals on wheels if that were made possible.

It's very haphazard right now.  

 

Edited March 24, 2020 by FairreLilette

[Madelaine McMasters]

 

20 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

Even most governments are now saying that in all likelihood millions are infected but considering asymptomatic and mild cases go un-noticed/diagnosed they are not added to the official tally.

This would actually be good news, if true. The greater the unnoticed to noticed ratio is, the less severe COVID-19 is, and the greater the already established herd immunity. Until we start sampling populations for antibodies, we won't know that ratio unless we reach a point somewhere that, absent any attempts to control the spread, the virus dies out on its own. At that point, herd immunity is the likely explanation, and we'll have a good handle on morbidity and mortality rates.

Edited March 24, 2020 by Madelaine McMasters

[Drayke Newall]

5 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

Yes, we have meals on wheels for the elderly and sick.  However, you said 'everyone' needs to not move around.  But above you state meals on wheels is willing to help those 'with' COVID-19.

Hmm, if I did say that wasn't what I meant. What I was implying is that you isolate everyone for whatever the minimum/maximum time it takes to show symptoms +1 day. Once you have determined who has the virus or is asymptomatic those people are locked down entirely and have food delivered. People that after the minimum/maximum symptom time don't show any symptoms and are not asymptomatic (ie look at the database to see if they had contact with anyone showing symptoms of which computer algorithms and AI can help by using Facebook etc to find out where people have been etc) are free to go to the shops etc to get food, however they must return to the house straight after until all people have shown no signs of the virus spreading.

9 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

absent any attempts to control the spread, the virus dies out on its own.

Best case scenario. Problem is, will it die out or will it become part of the yearly flu cycle like swine flu has in some instances etc? These things are still unknown as Japan and a few others imply even still it is possible to be re-infected (for reference: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2020/03/15/can-you-get-infected-by-coronavirus-twice-how-does-covid-19-immunity-work/#8744bf95c0f8). Until it is certain no mutation has occurred and that it is shown 100% that re-infection can not occur herd immunity can not be relied upon.

[LittleMe Jewell]

35 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

Yes you do have such a service. It's called Meals on Wheels. It just takes the CEO over there to expand the services accordingly and partner with delivery persons/companies to expand for this short period

Not sure how the Meals on Wheels is funded over there, but while ours does receive federal funding, it does not receive near enough funding to supply meals for every person in the US - or even a quarter of the US population.  The organization relies very much on donations from individuals and corporations. They already have a waiting list in many areas - and they currently only deliver meals to seniors.  There is no way they can deliver to the entire country.
 

[Madelaine McMasters]

3 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

Problem is, will it die out or will it become part of the yearly flu cycle like swine flu has in some instances etc? These things are still unknown as Japan and a few others imply even still it is possible to be re-infected (for reference: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2020/03/15/can-you-get-infected-by-coronavirus-twice-how-does-covid-19-immunity-work/#8744bf95c0f8). Until it is certain no mutation has occurred and that it is shown 100% that re-infection can not occur herd immunity can not be relied upon.

As you've stated, we don't know. Regarding mutations, many have already occurred. AFAIK none of them have shown significant difference in virulence and we don't know if the mutations allow the virus to evade detection by antibodies produced for another strain. We also don't know the half life of COVID-19 antibodies. The fastest way to determine whether herd immunity will develop is to step back and let COVID-19 progress unfettered. We're not gonna do that.

Perversely, anything we do to constrain the virus also constrains our ability to determine just what it will do if not constrained.

[Qie Niangao]

2 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

It's trite, but there are tradeoffs in almost everything. The problem is we often don't know what they are, even in retrospect. The entire "hammer and dance" idea is a tradeoff, because "hammer until it's gone" would probably kill more people.

There's another aspect of these tradeoffs that makes them so very difficult. It's often easier to assess the impact of what you do to address a problem you're focused on than the potentially much more diffuse effects of the things you didn't do as a result. For complex problems, we sometimes solve those portions that are most easy to "show and tell" about. This was true of the New Deal, which put a lot of resources into big infrastructure projects that were easy to put in the news, while neglecting vast swaths of rural America. We'll never know what America would look like if we'd allocated our resources differently.

Well... there certainly are tradeoffs, but I'm pretty confident there's not a tradeoff between the economy on the one hand and virus containment on the other. There will be, kinda, that's what the "dance" is about: managing public behavior to keep the effective R₀ below 1.

About the New Deal, I certainly can't speak for all of rural America, but the Rural Electrification Administration completely changed the rural Upper Midwest; even when I was a kid, the old timers still talked about what it meant to that part of the country. And over the very long haul it had huge effect on rural poverty, agricultural productivity, education... it was really the best thing the government ever did for them up to that point. (The larger point that it's futile arguing counterfactuals is, of course, completely valid.)

Edited March 24, 2020 by Qie Niangao
haul ≠ hall

[Da5id Weatherwax]

More on that stupid anecdote about an antimalarial drug coupled with an antibiotic. I've now read the paper (it's pre-publication and has not yet passed peer-review) and with the greatest respect to the scientists making the study, it's garbage.

The paper reports on a population of 36 people, of which 20 were experimental cases and 16 control. N=36 is WAY too small to draw any conclusions at all, but there are other problems with the "study" that render it worse than meaningless.

Mean age of the two groups (experimental and control) was 51 and 37 respectively. This critical covariate was not adequately controlled for.

The small size of the "study" is made even more questionable when you discover that the experimental group was originally 26 people, not 20 but 6 were excluded from the study. This is always a warning flag, because the one thing you can't do in studies like this is snag a bunch of people whose outcomes don't fit your theory and say "oh, but they don't count" - your reasons for excluding somebody after the start of the study must be absolutely ironclad.... So, what were they?

One person said "Sod this, I'm out" and bailed. This is a valid reason to exclude them.

One had a strong allergic reaction to the antimalarial drug being used. This is a known issue with this drug, that it can cause severe allergic reactions (among other side effects, some of which are themselves life-threatening). In a larger study one would scrutinize the numbers and make sure that the incidence of severe side effects was no greater in  the experimental population than the known data for an otherwise healthy population. The low numbers in this study do not permit this so they had to be excluded. Marginally dodgy but still valid.

But then we get to the other four. Three exited the study due to being admitted to the ICU and one died. These are outcomes that should feature in the study and which - if they had not been improperly excluded - would have resulted in  the numbers indicating that treatment with this particular drug combo has no effect on the outcome of a COVID-19 infection at all and that there was no valid or ethical reason to continue investigating this as a possible treatment regimen. Excluding these four is the only reason that the paper is able to claim a wider study was justified and that claim will not stand up to either peer review or the editorial review of a reputable journal

[FairreLilette]

1 hour ago, Da5id Weatherwax said:

More on that stupid anecdote about an antimalarial drug coupled with an antibiotic. I've now read the paper (it's pre-publication and has not yet passed peer-review) and with the greatest respect to the scientists making the study, it's garbage.

The paper reports on a population of 36 people, of which 20 were experimental cases and 16 control. N=36 is WAY too small to draw any conclusions at all, but there are other problems with the "study" that render it worse than meaningless.

Mean age of the two groups (experimental and control) was 51 and 37 respectively. This critical covariate was not adequately controlled for.

The small size of the "study" is made even more questionable when you discover that the experimental group was originally 26 people, not 20 but 6 were excluded from the study. This is always a warning flag, because the one thing you can't do in studies like this is snag a bunch of people whose outcomes don't fit your theory and say "oh, but they don't count" - your reasons for excluding somebody after the start of the study must be absolutely ironclad.... So, what were they?

One person said "Sod this, I'm out" and bailed. This is a valid reason to exclude them.

One had a strong allergic reaction to the antimalarial drug being used. This is a known issue with this drug, that it can cause severe allergic reactions (among other side effects, some of which are themselves life-threatening). In a larger study one would scrutinize the numbers and make sure that the incidence of severe side effects was no greater in  the experimental population than the known data for an otherwise healthy population. The low numbers in this study do not permit this so they had to be excluded. Marginally dodgy but still valid.

But then we get to the other four. Three exited the study due to being admitted to the ICU and one died. These are outcomes that should feature in the study and which - if they had not been improperly excluded - would have resulted in  the numbers indicating that treatment with this particular drug combo has no effect on the outcome of a COVID-19 infection at all and that there was no valid or ethical reason to continue investigating this as a possible treatment regimen. Excluding these four is the only reason that the paper is able to claim a wider study was justified and that claim will not stand up to either peer review or the editorial review of a reputable journal

Yeah, but you gotta know it's a lot stock and stock market manipulation, though I'm sure many biotech companies will out-perform in the coming months as revenues go up for "coronavirus" related stocks and some will eventually go into the penny range as a complete fraud to help COVID-19 in any way.  I hate to say that when someone in this thread has a sick husband who has been tested for COVID-19 but the results are not back yet.  

Now the articles seem to want to push the possible Ebola virus drug for COVID-19, the drug that doesn't work for Ebola but made by Gilead Sciences.  Gilead will go into the hundreds of dollars possibly if this drug is approved by the FDA.   And, this is the part of all of it I really hate - the profiteers off of other people's suffering.   However, fear and greed drive the stock market.   That's just a fact.  Not to mention we live in a media hype world now more than ever due to the technology and information age we currently live in.  

Edit to Say:  I posted that because if a doctor says do you want to try an experimental drug or nothing?  If I had COVID-19 and I'm on a respirator, I would take what my doctor suggested rather than nothing.   I am currently going through a drug trial myself.  However, it's been three and a half months and I've seen only a little change for the better.  I talked to my nurse today to let the doctor know what I'm using isn't working sufficiently enough...I need him to "try" something else.  If I wasn't suffering, I wouldn't ask.  But three and a half months on medicines that are doing no real good is not good.  Drug trials are fairly common.  I hope my doctor has something else to try and I have to take that chance because I'm suffering.  As far as COVID-19, it's all trial right now.  It's try or nothing pretty much but it's still manipulating the stock market.  

 

With a coronavirus vaccine at least a year away, some scientists are investigating existing medicines and compounds that might work as effective treatments. A drug called remdesivir is now in the spotlight, but health professionals, and scientists say it's too soon to know if it really works against COVID-19.

Remdesivir is an antiviral, intravenous medicine made by Gilead Sciences that's been around for years as an experimental compound, but was never approved by the Food and Drug Administration — or any other country's drug approval agency. It's now undergoing multiple clinical trials around the world to see if it's safe and effective against the coronavirus in people.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/21/819099156/might-the-experimental-drug-remdesivir-work-against-covid-19

  

Edited March 24, 2020 by FairreLilette